MacArthur Park

Some people think this is a drug song. Some people think it's a love song. Some people think it's about dinosaurs. I prefer to think of it as a love song (or rather, a song about love lost). Still, with the original (non-dinosaur) words, it doesn't really make complete sense either way (which, if it's a drug song, it doesn't really have to make sense); but she has a lovely voice, and the weirdness has a certain beauty, so I like the song :D. I don't particularly care for the disco segues, which musically suggests more to me that it's a drug song. Also "sweet green icing flowing down" suggests hallucinations, I mean, who bakes a cake with green icing??? Well, the lady who made the armadillo groom's cake in Steel Magnolias would probably do it, but who else??? Some people think the words are "sweet CREAM icing" - but that's not the majority opinion. The first Donna Summers song that I learned was "She Works Hard for the Money," which also tends to have a bad reputation as being about "a woman of ill repute." However, in that case, the lyrics really don't support that idea since it says "9am on the hour hand" and "she'll never sell out/she never will/ not for a dollar bill." Poor Donna Summer. Always misunderstood. Of course, being famous for a song called "Bad Girls" probably doesn't help either (but I don't really like that one, and don't know the words either). "Heaven Knows" is another one I do like. Anyway, here's MacArthur park (which wasn't even written by Donna Summer):

Spring was never waiting for us till
it ran one step ahead
as we followed in the dance.

Between the parted pages
we were pressed,
in love's hot, fevered iron
like a striped pair of pants.

Mac Arthur's 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, nooo!

I recall the yellow cotton dress
foaming like a wave
on the ground beneath your knees
birds like tender babies in your hands
and the old men playing
Chinese checkers
by the trees

Mac Arthur Park's 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, nooo!

There'll be another song for me
and I will sing it
there'll be another dream for me
someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warn
and never let you catch me
looking at the sun, oh yeah
and after all the loves of my life
after all loves in my life
you'll 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
oh and after all the loves in my life
after all the loves in my life
you'll still be the one
and I'll ask myself why.

Mac Arthur's 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, nooo!