songs for broken hearts, no.19

This has already beaten this topic to death in my previous blog, but Jimmy Webb’s MacArthur Park captures the precise moment at which the 60s go bad. The song is a collision of maddening pretension, conceptual overreach and flowery bombast, all of which become mangled in seven-plus flatulent minutes of I still don’t know what the fuck after years of listening to it and trying to make sense of it. And bear in mind that none of this makes it a bad song, though it’s really more accurate to call it a *cantata*. I really like Richard Harris’ performance, as over the top as it is, and I find the melody in the first and final ‘movements’ to be quite tragic sounding to a degree that makes it difficult to listen to in my current state of mind. The second movement is nice enough but just seems to drag on for way too long, while the superfluousness of the dance numberish third movement comes close to ruining the whole thing before the core melody mercifully returns for the finale, not a moment too soon. ...MacArthur Park is very polarizing with probably more people hating it than loving it these days. I’m ambivalent about it myself. Its melancholy emotional tone is about as moving as pop gets, and there’s something admirable about its sheer recklessness. But at the same time I find myself thinking that the song’s ambitiousness is a product of artistic hubris. This was not a problem specific to Jimmy Webb in 1968, but MacArthur Park is an especially stark example of the growing self consciousness that eroded the mid-60s dream of uncomplicated pleasure and freedom. Number 9, number 9, number 9....