Donna Summer had already topped the Billboard Dance Club Songs eight times by late 1978. She hadn’t scored a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, though. That changed thanks to her cover of Jimmy Webb’s enigmatic pop classic “MacArthur Park.”
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Summer’s disco-style rendition of “MacArthur Park” reached the top of the Hot 100 on November 11, 1978. The track bumped Anne Murray’s love ballad “You Needed Me” from the No. 1 slot and spent three weeks there. It was replaced by the memorable Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond duet, “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.”
Summer’s rendering of “MacArthur Park” was produced by her frequent studio collaborators Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. It was featured on the final side of her two-disc 1978 album Live and More, as part of an 18-minute medley called “MacArthur Park Suite.”
The lengthy track begins with an eight-and-a-half-minute version of “MacArthur Park.” It then segues into the original songs “One of a Kind” and “Heaven Knows.” The medley ends with a reprise of “MacArthur Park.” “MacArthur Park” was edited to under four minutes for release as a single. That’s the version that topped the Hot 100.
The extended eight-minutes-plus version, meanwhile, spent five weeks atop the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart.
More About “MacArthur Park”
The original version of “MacArthur Park” was recorded by Richard Harris. The Irish actor scored a No. 2 hit on the Hot 100 with the Webb-penned song in 1968. Webb produced and wrote all of the songs on Harris’ debut solo album, A Tramp Shining. The album was recorded on the heels of the actor’s star turn as King Arthur in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Camelot.
The melodramatic symphonic pop tune featured multiple sections and tempo changes. At seven minutes, 21 seconds, it was among the longest songs to find major success on the Hot 100.
Webb has said that song was inspired by the ending of a love affair he had with an ex-girlfriend named Suzy Horton, whom he used to meet for lunch at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. The tune features enigmatic lyrics about a cake with green icing melting in the rain.
“[T]he truth is that everything in the song was visible,” Webb explained in a 2014 interview in Newsday. “There’s nothing in it that’s fabricated. The old men playing checkers by the trees, the cake that was left out in the rain, all of the things that are talked about in the song are things I actually saw. And so it’s a kind of musical collage of this whole love affair that kind of went down in MacArthur Park.”
“MacArthur Park” was recorded by many other artists, including The Four Tops, whose version reached No. 37 on the Hot 100 in 1971.
Webb has written many hits for many well-known artists, but, thanks to Summer, “MacArthur Park” is his only composition ever to top the Hot 100.
Summer’s Other No. 1 Hot 100 Hits
After “MacArthur Park,” Summer hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 three more times, all in 1979. Her other chart-toppers were “Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girls,” and “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough),” a duet with Streisand.
The Legacy of “MacArthur Park”
Other artists who have covered include Waylon Jennings, Andy Williams, and Tony Bennett. “Weird Al” Yankovic released a parody version called “Jurassic Park” that was the lead single of his 1993 album, Alapalooza. Webb teamed up with The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson for a duet version that appeared on Jimmy’s 2013 album Still Within the Sound of My Voice.
This year, both Donna Summer’s and Richard Harris’ versions of “MacArthur Park” were featured in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, director Tim Burton’s sequel to his hit 1988 fantasy-comedy flick Beetlejuice.
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