Someone left the cake out in the rain: MacArthur Park and Jimmy Webb
A recent cleanup of LA’s horrific MacArthur Park — complete with cameras, city hall bigwigs and an Instagram victory lap — is already looking like a social media publicity stunt just one week after completion. …
Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez posted a video on Instagram touting what she described as a major cleanup effort at the troubled park Sunday March 1. The clip shows Hernandez, as well as Mayor Karen Bass and a lineup of what the councilwoman called the city’s “city family,” as officials celebrated the effort to spruce up the long-troubled space. …
But when The Post returned to MacArthur Park a week later to see how long the progress lasted, the reality on the ground told a very different story.
Trash was scattered across the park again. Encampment debris had crept back in. Drug waste littered the ground.
And all the sweet green icing flowing down.
Jimmy Webb wrote the lyrics to that song in 1967. Sounds like the park was in better shape back then. But someone really did leave a cake out in the rain:
When asked by interviewer Terry Gross what was going through his mind when he wrote the song’s lyrics, Webb replied that it was meant to be symbolic and referred to the end of a love affair. In an interview with Newsday in October 2014, Webb explained:
“Everything in the song was visible. There’s nothing in it that’s fabricated. The old men playing checkers by the trees, the cake that was left out in the rain, all of the things that are talked about in the song are things I actually saw. 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.”
The words to the song always struck me as odd and just plain silly. But I guess you had to be there.
Jimmy Webb wrote the lyrics to a lot of other popular songs, among them “Up, Up and Away”, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, “Wichita Lineman”, “Worst That Could Happen”, “Galveston”, and “All I Know”. Note the prevalence of place names.
I find this moving:
Following the death of his mother, Sylvia, in 1964, his father made plans to return to Oklahoma. Webb decided to stay in California to continue his music studies and to pursue a career as a songwriter in Los Angeles. He would later recall his father warning him about his musical aspirations, saying that “This songwriting thing is going to break your heart.” Seeing that his son was determined, however, he gave him $40, saying “It’s not much, but it’s all I have.”
It turned out to have been a pretty good investment after all.
“The words to the song always struck me as odd and just plain silly. But I guess you had to be there.
No, its the worst ‘hit” Webb ever wrote. I find its maudlin whining unlistenable.
Whereas “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” is songwriting perfection with Glen Campbell’s rendition unsurpassed.
Same goes for Witchita Lineman.
Well, it was the late 60s, the era of hippies, LSD, and “better living through chemistry”. The cake was a deep metaphor if you were high enough.
Personally, my favorite explanation came from a friend who said “What does “MacArthur Park” mean? It means the DJ had to hit the loo and needed a long song to cover the bathroom break.” 😉
No doubt “MacArthur Park” is way over the top. But heck, hasn’t everyone been somewhere in that maudlin vicinity from a young lost love?
It certainly has been a popular song, going top ten all over the world. It’s been covered by more than 150 artists and in different genres.
In 1970 Waylon Jennings won a Grammy for his country cover.
Then when Donna Summer did it for disco in 1978, it was a total break-out hit. Which is still going strong — Alysa Lu won a 2026 gold medal, skating to it.
Even Weird Al got into the act with a brilliant send-up, “Jurassic Park.” Check the claymation!
–“Weird Al” Yankovic, “Jurassic Park (Official Video)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh4zvQfDhi0
Webb was a top songwriter. “MacArthur Park” may have missed the mark for some people, but it was a bullseye for many more.
Webb wrote the lyrics *and music* for MacArthur Park, and all his other songs, as far as I know. I like or love most of his songs, including MacArthur Park.
Glen Campbell protested “The Rand McNally phase of my career is over!” before he was convinced to record Wichita Lineman. I’m glad he did!
Leaving the cake out in the rain has to be the most made fun of lyric ever written.
So it’s memorable that’s for sure
@Huxley,
Yes, the go go dancing dinosaurs in cages are my favorite moment, next to “I admit it’s kinda eerie/but it proves my Chaos theory/ and I won’t be coming back this way again…”
If you have time, be sure to check out this “Jurassic Park/Xfinity” commercial from the 2026 Super Bowl.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnncIVKvJkg
It was a great stress reliever (and fun!) to play the piano sheet music version of the song in my youth – easy to sight read and not too difficult technically. FWIW.
huxley:
That Jurassic Park is a great earworm killer.
Loved the animation and lyrics.
Thanks!
PS – Did the Bee Gees do a disco cover?
@Geoffrey Britain,
Exactly! Ten times over.
I think Macarthur Park has a catchy main tune, and as with many hits, the goofiness of the lyrics doesn’t matter. The long middle section of the original is meh forgettable, presumably why Donna Summer didn’t bother with it.
I didn’t realize Webb had such a long career, as I only know him from those late 60s-early 70s classics. But I pretty much stopped following popular music after the early 70s.
I love Wichita Lineman, it perfectly captures a mood, a moment in a man’s life, a reality of life. Good times or bad, good marriage or divorce, the work of life has to get done.
I’m not a huge fan of By The Time I Get To Phoenix, but I recognize the talent in it.
Galveston is by far my favorite Glen Campbell song, no comparison.
As for Webb’s dad…that’s a common reaction of parents and others to dreams and ambitions like Webb’s…and 99% of the time they’re right. For every Jimmy Webb there are hundreds of people who pursued the same dream and got nowhere. The naysayers are always there because the naysayers are usually right.
He’ll be 80 later this year and he’s still an active performer. He played at the jazz club Yoshi’s in Oakland last year or maybe the year before.
BTW, “Jimmy” is his legal name, not James.
And then there was this rendition of the song on ice.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2026/02/19/alysa-liu-olympics-figure-skating-free-skate/88735621007/
” At nationals, Liu brought out her Lady Gaga medley, but went back to her “MacArthur Park Suite” program for the Olympics. The last time she used it, she scored a 146.70 at the Grand Prix Finals, which she won.”
I tried to find a link to Liu’s Olympic program, but all of them I could locate were now marked “private” but no indication of who the “owner” is – maybe NBC decided to paywall them.
Here’s Neo’s post.
We had a rather robust discussion about the song in the comments.
https://thenewneo.com/2026/02/21/what-is-it-about-alysa-liu/
Actually, I have always like MacArthur Park, and all of Webb’s other songs that I know, mostly from Glen Campbell’s covers.
And FWIW, the melting cake appealed to me somehow.
Maybe in my teens I connected with the image, since most of my HS crushes were as transient as the “sweet green icing flowing down.”
Take a cake out in the rain sometime and watch what happens.
MacArthur Park, like huge portions of all the Democrat-controlled big cities (and now spreading to small ones), is a prime example of what happens when you remove all social and legal controls on behavior.
This may be a result of the personal proclivities of the Left in general.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/lifestyle/article-15651661/oscars-2026-aftermath-trash-venue-backlash.html
Some of the comments responding to the picture of the auditorium:
I first became aware of the same lack of even a minimum standard of decent public behavior when the news contrasted pictures of arenas after an Obama rally with those after Republican gatherings, including stories of the Tea Partiers not only picking up after themselves, but cleaning the other debris in the parks and streets around them.
Old stories are hard to find, but I got this hit that also speaks to the topic.
https://www.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2008/05/huge_obama_rally_in_portland_h.html
MacArthur Park, like huge portions of all the Democrat-controlled big cities (and now spreading to small ones), is a prime example of what happens when you remove all social and legal controls on behavior.
==
They remove all social and legal controls on drug use, foul language, sexual misconduct, and displaying parts of one’s corpus. People wishing to make discretionary decisions over who to hire and fire in their own business, over to whom to rent their real estate, and over with whom to vend goods and services are harassed by lawfare artists and state employees. So are people who forcefully defend themselves and their property contra malefactors and who offer opinions on social and political matters which conflict with the going line in the Democratic Party.
Not to detract from Neo’s quote in any way, but $40 was worth a lot more in 1964.
Meanwhile, things got so bad in the real MacArthur park area of L.A. that the owner of Langer’s Deli, a Los Angeles institution located nearby for 75 years, threatened to close the business if the city didn’t do something about the crime, drug use, and vagrants. THAT got the attention of the mayor, who hastily put together a one-on-one sit down with Norm Langer to persuade him to reconsider. AFAIK Langer’s is still open, but the long term trend for the area does not look promising.
Selfy:
Equivalent to $419.68 today.
Thank you, Neo. I was thinking ~$100!
I always thought the best song Jimmy Webb wrote was “Galveston”.
Entry level McDonalds for high school kids in 1964 paid $1.35 an hour. $40.00 was less than a weeks pay
“In California, entry-level McDonald’s workers at most locations earn a minimum of $20.00 per hour. This rate is mandated by state law for fast-food chains with 60 or more locations nationwide.”
This rate is significantly higher than the standard California state minimum wage of $16.90.
Jimmy Webb wrote one of my favorite songs – Highwaymen sung by the supergroup The Highwaymen: Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash. It’s a wonderful song.
Last year I sang McArthur Park in karaoke, along with some 300+ other songs. My hobby, no longer new since’22, to be more with other people.
The too long break is a weakness, but the memorability of the highly unusual sight of a “cake out in the rain” stays with all of us who like the song.
Tho I grew up in LA, frequently visiting Griffith Park, usually for the observatory, I never went to McArthur Park, nor particularly wanted to.
The Dem allowed CA mess is so sad, the Golden State no more. Hope Reps make it better. My 4 kids prefer our life, with nice extended families despite lower wages, here in Slovakia. Where DST hasn’t started yet.
Please see the Second City version of “McArthur Park” on Youtube.