MACARTHUR PARK REPRISED

Folks have you ever heard MacArthur Park again by Richard Harris? I've been listening to it again despite having heard it only during my college days. Now I appreciate more the music and the lyrics which make me wonder really what it means overall in our life. 

The song sang by Harris achieved number two in the the three charts - Billboard, Cash Box and Record World at that time and Donna Summer's disco version attained first in all three after a decade. 

The composer, Jimmy Webb says that he had composed it after his girlfriend Susie Horton broke off with him. The park was where they used to meet as it was only across the office where Susie worked. It reveals his pain and passion, the pain of being a composer still building up his career, and the passion of making music that reaches up to the skies. 

Some sectors have said that his lyrics reflect a mind that has been immersed in marijuana and other substances, which I would say maybe a vehicle which some artists use in order to raise some creative ideas. Others have commented on how the melody transcends the usual songs that go ABA or ABBA,  His MacArthur Park rather goes from ABCA and it uses solos and choruses, as well as varying tempos, from midtempo (neither fast nor slow)  to slow to "Allegro" and back.

The lyrics is full of longing for a love that is going away and his memories of the affair linger on the surrounding park -- the cake and "the sweet green icing flowing down," the birds and the old men playing checkers. . 

 Does it really matter if the lyrics exhibit illogical nuances like "MacArthur Park is melting in the dark" or "I don't think that I can take it (the cake) Cause it took so long to bake it?"

To my mind, this is what you would call poetic license, imagining the structural changes that a park acquires. Maybe the breakup really caused some questions in the mind of Webb but he came up with lyrics that were so poetically apt to the music. 

However, I would say that the love relationship that is shown here seems to be immersed in the memories of the flesh encounter. The sixties was full of fearful scenarios -- the drafting of men to join the war in Vietnam that was completely anti-democratic, the use of LSD and other drugs that made the mind convoluted. All these could have made people escape through various means, including being creative, I suppose, that is creatively writing music that speaks of what the artist has been feeling all along. 

In the end,  the music lingers because the melody, even without the lyrics could stand alone. However, the singing of Richard Harris brings a very deep longing for the reverse of a relationship that is dying.  And so the lyrics also arise to make us ponder on the fleeting moments of the friendship and how they could make us question, why go back again and again to a dying love? 

Listen to the song once again, Folks and discover the loves of your life.