Donna Summer – MacArthur Park (Live 1978)

“MacArthur Park” – Single by Donna Summer from the album Live and More
Charted: No.5 in UK and No.1 in US
B-side: “Once Upon a Time” (Live) (U.S.)
“Last Dance” (Live) (France)
“MacArthur Park” (Part 2) (Japan)
“One of a Kind” (12″)
“Heaven Knows (12”)
“MacArthur Park Suite” (12″)
Released: September 24, 1978
Recorded: 1978
Length 8:27 (album version)
3:59 (single version)
17:47 (with reprise)
Label Casablanca
Songwriter: Jimmy Webb
Producers: Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte

“MacArthur Park” was a huge hit in 1968 for the actor Richard Harris, who played Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies. His version, running 7:20 and delivered in a solemn and dramatic manner, was a big hit, going to #2 in America. It was also one of the more unusual songs of the time, telling a cryptic tale of a cake left out in the rain.

Ten years later, Donna Summer put out this disco version of the song that was an even bigger hit, going to #1 and filling dance floors at the height of the disco era.

Summer’s recording of “MacArthur Park”, included as part of the “MacArthur Park Suite” on her double album Live and More, was eight minutes and forty seconds long. The shorter seven-inch vinyl single version – which omits the song’s balladic second movement – afforded Summer her first #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, also becoming the last of seven hit versions of compositions by Jimmy Webb to reach the Top Ten on the Hot 100, with “MacArthur Park” by Donna Summer being the only recording of a Webb composition to top the Hot 100.