+ scroll down for Macarthur Park by Donna Summer
Australian singles charts:
Macarthur Park entered the Australian singles chart* on 22 June 1968 and went all the way to #1. The song was #9 on the Top 100 of 1968.
Album:
The song is on A Tramp Shining which entered the Australian albums chart* on 7 September 1968 and peaked at #6.
Songwriter:
Jimmy Webb
Producer:
Jimmy Webb
Record label of Australian release:
RCA
*Kent Music Report / Australian Chart Book. See About.
SCROLL DOWN FOR BONUS CLIP: Donna Summer sings Macarthur Park live
Wikipedia:
In 1967, producer Bones Howe had asked Jimmy Webb to create a pop song with different movements and changing time signatures. Webb delivered MacArthur Park to Howe with “everything he wanted”, but Howe did not care for the ambitious arrangement and unorthodox lyrics and the song was rejected by the group the Association, for whom it was originally intended.
Read more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Park_(song)
Songfacts:
Jimmy Webb, who wrote the song, explained in Q magazine: “It’s clearly about a love affair ending, and the person singing it is using the cake and the rain as a metaphor for that. OK, it may be far out there, and a bit incomprehensible, but I wrote the song at a time in the late 1960s when surrealistic lyrics were the order of the day.”
Read more: www.songfacts.com/facts/richard-harris/macarthur-park
Lyrics:
Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed
In love’s hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants|
Click for full lyrics
This song is also on our Spotify playlist Bang a Gong – the 60s
Find more songs to enjoy: Bang a Gong song finder
BONUS CLIP
Donna Summer singing Macarthur Park live at ‘Night of the Proms’ in Belgium in 2005.
Macarthur Park by Donna Summer entered the Kent Music Report on 23 October 1978 and peaked at #8. It was #50 on the Top 100 of 1978.
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