Jimmy Webb: “MacArthur Park” to Olympic Gold

“This Angel on Ice," Alysa Liu

If there is one indelible scene that will outlast the 2026 Winter Olympics, it will be 20-year-old American Alysa Liu’s return to skating to seize the gold medal in a near-perfect, and perfectly relaxed, eight-minute freestyle performance to Donna Summer’s version of Jimmy Webb’s “MacArthur Park.”

Yesterday, Webb and I talked for almost an hour about Liu’s remarkable landings of triple Lutz/triple toe, the grace of her spins, and the lasting power of Webb’s masterwork, loved and reviled, a crown with thorns in Webb’s 79 years.

The copyright owner, NBC Sports, has disabled the Liu performance from being played outside You Tube.

“I watched it with my mouth hanging open,” Webb said during a Zoom call as we each waited for the blizzard, him from his home on the North Shore of Long Island, mine closer to the city. “Because I’ve never . . . I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever enjoyed that event, freestyle, I guess it is, because it’s always so tense. It’s always like, oh my god, you know, if the skater falls down now, they lose the whole thing. There’s so much tension in the moment, and my wife sort of forced me, because I said, ‘I don’t think I want to see that.’

THIS ANGEL, ALYSA LIU

“And I’m so glad I saw it, because I saw this angel, Alysa Liu, appear on the ice, dancing. Flying, soaring, really, to my old kind of beat-up song. And she filled it with new life, and new enthusiasm. She brought me back to the kind of euphoria I used to feel in the studio when I was working with Richard Harris, and the orchestra would come in on that last chorus. And there was a tremendous feeling of joy, even though the lyric is sadly, you know about failure. Overcoming failure. And it’s a very potent combination. The music is about success, about overcoming failure. And it’s a very potent combination, somehow. Because it appeals to the winner in us, but it sympathizes with the loser in us, which, you know, we all have a bit of both.”

Immediately after Liu’s gold medal, Donna Summer’s version appeared and remains, as of today, in the iTunes top ten. Bruce Sudano, who was married to Summer and was her musical partner until her death in 2012, said in a text message yesterday, “I’ve always been a big believer in a great song with a great singer and in this case a magnificent arrangement by Greg Mattheson with a perfect mix by Juergen Koppers. It’s pure magic. Donna‘s music continues to lift people up to exhilarate to inspire and to bring joy and that’s what this performer and performance tapped into. It was spectacular.”

That original version of “MacArthur Park,” a recitation over orchestra by actor Richard Harris, was released in April 1968, after the murder of the Rev. Martin Luther King, and reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1968, weeks after Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Bookended by history, it was an odd recording for its time, for any time. The orchestration in an era of hard rock; the lyrics surreal, mystifying, defying literal analysis: One of those seemingly cryptic pop music mysteries, not uncommon at the time, but still singled out for its distinctive metaphors.

MacArthur 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 no!

(c) Words and music by Jimmy Webb, Universal Music Publishing

Webb and I discussed his ambivalence about the song in the Nov. 5, 2023 post, “The Meaning of MacArthur Park,” still No. 1 on the Critical Conditions homepage archives. Yet the song has long outlived its controversies, which include Dave Barry declaring “MacArthur Park” the worst song of all-time in his slim chapbook, “Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs,” an off-shoot of his Miami Herald newspaper column.

Webb used to take such criticism harder than he does now. “My friend, Gerry Beckley, from the group America, called me up and said, ‘don’t feel so bad. Dewey (Bunnell) and I were number five. They wrote ‘A Horse with No Name.’ “

It has been covered more than 200 times, including parodies by “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Jurassic Park” (1993). Comedian Don Novello, performing as Father Guido Sarducci, released his version in Italian in 1986 as “Parco MacArthur (La Torta in la Pioggia),” “the Cake in the Rain.”

Among Webb’s favorites was a segment of the David Letterman Show on July 21, 2014. Webb played piano; Paul Shaffer led the CBS Orchestra; and Will Lee, guitarist for Shaffer’s house band, pulls out all the stops on the vocal.

At the end of the performance, a giant cake comes into view on stage. “Will Lee climbs a ladder to the top of the cake, and I can see him, and I’m thinking, ‘this guy’s gonna die, it’s gonna be in the papers tomorrow,’” Webb said. Both Lee and the cake survived.

More recently, Tim Burton deployed Richard Harris’ version of “MacArthur Park” in a climactic wedding and dance scene in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (2024) featuring Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder.

“It was Tim Burton’s ‘piece de resistance,’ you know, at the end of this weirdly seductive movie,” Webb said. “Burton and I have been joking about, since I emailed him and said, ‘thank you for bringing my monster back to life.’” And he emailed me after the Olympics and said, “your monster, watch it, your monster marches on.”

I told Webb he should do a victory lap at this point, rather than thinking about the polarizing reception of “MacArthur Park.” Its successful afterlife has affirmed its greatness, not only in the Great American Songbook, but as one of the outstanding orchestral arrangements done by the very young Jimmy Webb nearly 60 years ago. For yet other look, there is an astonishing performance by young piano virtuoso Micah McLaurin and singer Amber Riley.

“I’m glad you said that, because I am letting go of a lot of that,” Webb said, crediting his wife, Laura Savini Webb, a host and producer for PBS, for keeping him young and focused. Savini herself may be as visible as her husband on Long Island and the New York area, from the decades she was the face of PBS Channel 21, WLIW as a VP of marketing and communications, as well as channel 13 WNET, from 1990-2011. She still does national pledge breaks for PBS.

“I think I suffered a bit at the beginning because I was really just a farm-bred kid from Oklahoma when this all started. My first job was at Motown, and gained a foothold in this business, and had a couple of hits. Very quickly I had the Song of the Year. I had a Grammy, and wondered if I deserved it.”

A YOUNG MAN’S GRAMMY TRIUMPHS

He was still 21 at the 10th annual Grammy Awards, Feb. 29, 1968. Webb’s 1967 hit for the the 5th Dimension, “Up, Up and Away,” was Song of the Year. Glen Campbell won two top awards, including Best Vocal Male Performance, for Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” Webb won the Grammy in 1969 for Best Arrangement for “MacArthur Park”; and Best Country Song for “Highwayman” in 1986, by the Highwaymen: Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson.

If you think it doesn’t get better than that, it did get better for Jimmy Webb. Bob Dylan performed Webb’s song “Let’s Begin” during his 1981 tour, 18 times according to the Dylan tour database. Sixteen of those shows were in Europe, but there was one show in the New York metro area.

“I had no idea this [”Let’s Begin”] was in the works, but an old friend of mine was playing guitar with him, and he said, you have to go.” Not a fan of loud arena concerts, Webb resisted. “I went, somewhat reluctantly, but halfway through the show, Bob Dylan says, ‘Ok, Jimmy, this one’s for you.”

Bob Dylan sings Jimmy Webb’s “Let’s Begin,” 1981.

Earlier in February 2026, Webb went to Stillwater, Oklahoma, to tape a PBS Great Performances episode, now in its 53rd season, that will come out in November, 2026.

“You know, thankfully, it’s not one of Donald Trump’s “honors”...It would be nice to have the Kennedy honors back the way they were before he came along,” Webb said. “I think we’re seeing an unprecedented culture clash under this president. This movement to defund public broadcasting, to defund the EPA. Enlightenment is being put under a bushel here, for some reason. Thankfully, that won’t last forever.

“And I think this young girl who won the gold medal for us at the Olympics, I think she is the crocus of spring in the artistic life of our country. This is the beginning of our comeback. And we desperately need it.”

That cake in the rain is no longer melting: It’s been sealed by Alysa Liu on ice, and encased with gold on Donna Summer’s version of “MacArthur Park,” last week at the Olympic games.

“You know, that magic, that stardust kind of thing, where you ask yourself, ‘did that really happen’?” Webb says. “The Olympics thing came out of nowhere for me. I am elated by it. Dare I say, it redeems “MacArthur Park” as a song that doesn’t need to be made fun of. And I’m very happy right now. Very, very happy.”

© 2026, Wayne Robins

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