At nearly eight minutes long, “MacArthur Park” wasn’t an obvious candidate for pop radio in 1968. That didn’t stop Richard Harris from taking it nearly all the way to No. 1.
Better known at the time as an actor, Harris recorded the sweeping Jimmy Webb composition for his debut album, A Tramp Shining. “MacArthur Park” stretched across multiple musical sections, combined an orchestra with a rock rhythm section, and featured some of the era’s most unusual lyrics. Against the odds, it became a major hit and an enduring part of both men’s careers.
Webb found inspiration in a real place.
The songwriter had spent time with a former girlfriend at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, and memories of their deteriorating relationship informed the song. Instead of recounting the breakup straightforwardly, Webb filled his lyrics with vivid, surreal images, including the famous cake left out in the rain.
“I’ve been asked a million times: ‘What is the cake left out in the rain?'” Webb told The Guardian. “It’s something I saw – we would eat cake and leave it in the rain. But as a metaphor for losing a chapter of your life, it seemed too good to be true. When she broke up with me, I poured the hurt into the song.”
The song wasn’t originally intended for Harris.
Webb initially presented a lengthy composition incorporating “MacArthur Park” to The Association, whose string of ’60s hits included “Cherish” and “Windy.” The group passed, leaving the material available when Harris later approached Webb about working together.
The pairing was unconventional.
Harris had earned an Academy Award nomination for This Sporting Life and was emerging as a major movie star, but he wanted to make an album. Webb produced and arranged A Tramp Shining, surrounding Harris’ dramatic delivery with the elaborate instrumentation “MacArthur Park” demanded.
“I insisted, in the strongest possible manner, that I wanted to record MacArthur Park,” Harris told RTE. “He told me that story about the Association turning it down and laughing at it. But I said, ‘If I do the album, I am going to sing this song.’ He said, ‘You can’t do it,’ and said that in a way that suggested he believed I couldn’t do it, as in, sing the thing. But I was adamant. We fought about that for ages, and he can be as stubborn as I am. So finally, I made a deal with Jim. I would do the whole song, and if I couldn’t pull it off, we would release only the middle section. If I sing the early bits, which he seemed to think I couldn’t, and I sing them as well as the middle section, we would release it all.”
Its running time was just as unusual.
At approximately seven minutes and 20 seconds, “MacArthur Park” was far longer than the typical radio single. Still, the song climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, kept from the top spot by Herb Alpert’s “This Guy’s in Love with You.”
It also proved remarkably adaptable.
Country star Waylon Jennings recorded a version that earned a Grammy, while Donna Summer transformed “MacArthur Park” into a disco epic a decade later. Her recording reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978, finally taking Webb’s composition to the top of the chart.
Fifty-eight years after Harris released it, “MacArthur Park” remains difficult to mistake for anything else. Its strange imagery, orchestral grandeur, shifting sections, and extraordinary length broke nearly every rule of a conventional pop single and became the very qualities that helped make it unforgettable.
Related: 1968 Country Song, Covered by Glen Campbell, Became a Major Hit Despite Never Reaching No. 1
