I recently reviewed Bobby Goldboro's irredeemably bad "Honey" and made some remarks about how Starship's "We Built This City" and 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up" have become stock answers to the 'what's the worst song ever?' question. I also wondered why older bad tracks no longer have their champions. Of course, this wasn't always the case. Back in 1997, humourist Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs came about when he surveyed his baby boomer fans as to the pop songs they disliked the most. The results? Goldsboro's "Honey" came in fourth, Ohio Express' "Yummy Yummy Yummy" ended up in second and Richard Harris' "MacArthur Park" actually topped the damn thing. (The third place finisher also happens to be a Canadian number one which we'll be getting to)
Yes, "MacArthur Park" was once considered to be the worst song ever. The same song that is something of a baroque pop masterpiece which Harris badly oversings and with a notoriously clumsy line about a cake left out in the rain. Far from being the worst song ever it sounds more like a perfectly adequate pop number to me!
But let's first deal with its two major howlers, one of which is all too well known while hardly anyone ever says anything about the other. "I'll never have that recipe again" must be the single most mocked line in pop history and with good reason. Beyond it sounding absolutely ridiculous, it brings up far too many questions that no one could possibly ever answer. Why has the recipe disappeared? He may blame "somebody" for leaving it out in the rain but why didn't he rescue this beloved dessert? Did it ever occur to him that the reason it was left behind was because it was terrible and wasn't worth saving? And, most vital of all, why the hell was it chosen as the song's de facto chorus? Had Webb slotted the line in once it could have been easy to dismiss as harmless or even something the listener could have chuckled at; instead, it has become the chief reason why a whole generation of Dave Barry fans had such little regard for the song in the first place.
Richard Harris' faulty singing isn't brought up enough as a legit criticism of "MacArthur Park". To be fair to him, the vocals on notable cover versions by both the Four Tops and Waylon Jennings are no better with the former being uncharacteristically bland on the part of the normally astounding Levi Stubbs. Still, an old theatre vet like Harris — they say his King Arthur was the toast of the Old Vic — could have gone for something with a bit more flair rather than coming across like a labourer who blew his weekly wages at the dog track. The trouble with Harris, Jennings and Stubbs is that they took to it like a serious piece of work. This is why the reading by Ricky Gardiner of Scottish prog rock group Beggars Opera makes for such a refreshing change of pace: he seemed to realize that it was an over-the-top piece of nonsense and treated it as such.
(The other thing the Beggars Opera version has going for it is that they fully exploited the musical possibilities in "MacArthur Park" which other renditions merely hint at. Honestly, to its credit the Harris original probably does a better job of it than the disappointingly restrained versions by either the Four Tops or Waylon Jennings but nevertheless it can't hope to compare with the heights of prog rock pomp)
Anyway, I ought to offer up at least a half-baked defense of the Richard Harris "MacArthur Park" and I shall do so in point form. Here goes:
✓ While its seven-and-a-half minute length is notorious, I gotta say it doesn't drag. Its movements seemed perfectly timed so that none of them outstay their welcome. (Not to pile on the Beggars Opera praise but their rendition tacks on an extra minute or so and is similarly well pacing; the Tops and Jennings versions, by contrast, are both shorter and somehow also feel far more drawn out)
✓ Beyond being musically impressive, Webb's lyrics manage to just about approach the absurdist dream world of The Beatles' "Penny Lane". The songwriter has admitted that he witnessed everything that takes place in its narrative including the old men playing checkers (no elitist chess for these old timers) and even the cake being rained on. Some of Paul McCartney's acid-fueled memories and humour would have helped water down all that mushy melodrama and Webb acknowledged that he was an "emotional machine" during this time but I appreciate the attempt all the same.
✓ That said, lyrics clearly weren't a Webb specialty (he also wrote "Up, Up and Away") and it's tempting to imagine what could have been done with a proper wordsmith, like his very own Tony Asher. Webb seems like the type who would have had connections in the world of advertising jingles which makes it a wonder he never went in that direction.
(I said it was going to be half-baked, didn't I?)
For all its flaws, "MacArthur Park" is not the worst song of all time. Neither is "Yummy Yummy Yummy" for that matter. (On the other hand, there's certainly a good case to be made for "Honey") I should state that I have no problem with anyone considering them to be the worst, only that it be something they believe rather than being the low hanging fruit for everyone to take swipes at. I'm quite happy to live in a world free from "MacArthur Park" but I don't mind the fact that it no longer seems to crop up on worst ever lists either. Now if only the same could be said for "We Built This City" and "What's Up".
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You may have noticed that I didn't mention what is probably the most famous and successful version of "MacArthur Park". That is because it will be coming up as an entry in its own right at some point in the future. Assuming I think to do so, some of the ideas from this review may find their way into that one. Suffice it to say, those magnificent bastards from Beggars Opera outstripped that one too.
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