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Jimmy Webb and his girlfriend, Susie Horton, frequently had lunch at MacArthur Park, a convenient rendezvous point since Susie worked directly across the street. When she ended the relationship with Jimmy, he remembered specific sights and scenes they had shared at the park during better times.

“And so it’s a kind of musical collage of this whole love affair that kind of went down in MacArthur Park. Back then, I was kind of like an emotional machine, like whatever was going on inside me would bubble out of the piano and onto paper.”
– Jimmy Webb, songwriter

Nearly five decades after the song’s release, Webb’s wife, Laura Savini, says she is constantly asked about the song.

“When people see he’s my husband, that’s always the first question I get: ‘What does MacArthur Park mean?’ And I always say it’s an abstract painting, an impressionist painting. It’s art, but in a musical form. You make it what you want it to be. Jimmy plays it down, but it’s a heartbreaking song when you listen to just him sing it and you hear all the words without all the orchestrations. It blows your mind — oh, my God, all the pain in that song.”

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.

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark,
All the sweet, green icing flowing down.
Someone left the cake out in the rain.
I don’t think that I can take it,
‘Cause it took so long to bake it,
And I’ll never have that recipe again.
Oh no!

I recall the yellow cotton dress
Foaming like a wave
On the ground around your knees.
The birds, like tender babies in your hands,
And the old men playing checkers by the trees

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark,
All the sweet, green icing flowing down.
Someone left the cake out in the rain.
I don’t think that I can take it,
‘Cause it took so long to bake it,
And I’ll never have that recipe again.
Oh no!

There will be another song for me,
For I will sing it.
There will be another dream for me,
Someone will bring it.
I will drink the wine while it is warm,
And never let you catch me looking at the sun.
And after all the loves of my life,
After all the loves of my life,
You’ll still be the one.

I will take my life into my hands and I will use it.
I will win the worship in their eyes and I will lose it.
I will have the things that I desire,
And my passion flow like rivers through the sky.
And after all the loves of my life,
Oh, after all the loves of my life,
I’ll be thinking of you…
And wondering why.

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark,
All the sweet, green icing flowing down.
Someone left the cake out in the rain.
I don’t think that I can take it,
‘Cause it took so long to bake it,
And I’ll never have that recipe again.
Oh no!

Oh no.
No.
Oh no!