Rupert Holmes might be best known for singing about a certain rum-spiked cocktail. But it’s the story behind “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” that’s even more intoxicating, and considerably more complicated than its breezy yacht rock sound suggests.
Released in August 1979 on Holmes’ fifth studio album, Partners in Crime, “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” was issued as a single that September and entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 85 in October. It cracked the Top 40 the following month and reached the pinnacle on Dec. 22, 1979, ending Styx’s two-week run with “Babe.” But here’s where things get even more interesting.
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Following a three-week stay in the top spot, KC and The Sunshine Band’s “Please Don’t Go” came along and booted Holmes’ party anthem from the peak for a temporary one-week victory. On Jan. 12, 1980, the beachy hit reclaimed its spot at the top for another week, before Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You” took over for a solid month.
In the end, Holmes’ “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” made Billboard history as the final No. 1 song of the 1970s, the first song to hit No. 1 in two different decades, and the only single to hold the No. 1 position in both 1979 and 1980. Not bad for a story song about personal ads and parasol-topped frozen drinks.
“Sometimes I look at personal columns to get ideas for songs because people fascinate me,” Holmes told Songfacts, adding that a woman’s ad looking for love caught his attention. “I thought to myself, What would happen if I answered this ad? and I thought, with my stupid luck, I would answer the ad and find out it had been placed by the woman I was living with, never realizing that she was bored with me. The story took hold of my mind.”
The song then took on a life of its own: A man bored with his relationship answers a personal ad. The woman he’s meeting turns out to be his current partner. They both realize they’ve been looking for something new and decide the relationship itself was what they were missing. It’s an entire season of Melrose Place wrapped up in a single four-and-a-half-minute tune.
Holmes titled his song “Escape.” However, the label wanted something easier to identify, so they added the infamous parenthetical. Initially, Holmes wasn’t thrilled about it but has since given up the fight.
“‘The Piña Colada Song’ is technically called ‘Escape,’ although even I have long since given up referring to it as that,” he said. “It’s my most successful song and probably the least typical of my work.”
With its smooth vocals, polished studio production, soft rock groove, and sun-soaked imagery, “Escape” not only became Holmes’ biggest song, but has since become a staple of the yacht rock canon. Not to mention found itself on the soundtracks of classic blockbusters including Shrek and Guardians of the Galaxy.
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Before his breakout hit, Holmes, born David Goldstein, worked behind the scenes as a session player, songwriter, arranger, and record producer. As a member of the Street People, he had a single, “Jennifer Tomkins,” crack the Top 40 in 1970. He also wrote “Timothy,” a 1971 Top 20 hit for the band The Buoys, but neither brought the success Holmes saw years later.
Riding the momentum of his dual-decade chart-topper, Holmes enjoyed a string of career highs. Life after “Escape” included winning three Tony Awards for his musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood in 1986, which made him the first in Broadway history to solely win a Tony as an author, composer, and lyricist. He also won an Emmy Award for his series Remember WENN in 1996, and his crime novel Where the Truth Lies was adapted into a major motion picture in 2005.
For all the chapters in Holmes’s storied career, the world still knows him best for the soft-rock bop about a couple, their journey back to each other, and the island slushie that helped them see their glasses as half full.
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