Songfacts®:

• "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.
• The extended version of this song runs 8:27 and takes lots of musical twists and turns, driven by Summer's producers, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. Moroder, from Italy, was an electronic music pioneer and an architect of disco. A year earlier, he and Summer ventured into new musical territory on her electo-magnificent hit "I Feel Love."
  
  This extended mix was very popular in clubs and considered the definitive version, but was too long for most radio stations to play, so the single was cut down to 3:54. It was a #1 hit for three weeks.
• The song was written by Jimmy Webb, who also wrote Glen Campbell's classics "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Wichita Lineman." There really is a MacArthur Park - it's in Los Angeles where Webb was living. The song was inspired by a difficult breakup.
• If you'd like to experience disco in all its glory, find a dark room, put on headphones (over the ear, please - earbuds didn't exist in 1978), and play the "MacArthur Park Suite." Running 17:35, it also incorporates Summer's songs "One Of A Kind," and "Heaven Knows." By the end, you'll know what it was like to hang out at Studio 54.
• For the rock and roll crowd - the folks into Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones - the Richard Harris original of "MacArthur Park" was an affront, but Donna Summer's version was a crime against humanity. Disco in general was very polarizing, as was the Harris version of "MacArthur Park." When the two were combined, you got the ultimate "love it or hate it" song.
• The song's writer, Jimmy Webb, was thrilled with Donna Summer's cover. Especially when it went to #1, giving him his only chart-topper.
• "MacArthur Park" was the first #1 hit on the Hot 100 for Donna Summer, who followed it with three more to earn the title "Queen Of Disco." Those other three are "Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls" and "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)."
• Summer's version plays at the beginning of the 2024 movie Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The Richard Harris version is used later in the film in a scene were a cake gets rained on. The movie introduced the song to many new listeners; both versions got a spike in streams in the aftermath.
• Donna Summer's version of "MacArthur Park" found a new audience when the 20-year-old American figure skater Alysa Liu pulled off an ebullient routine to the song to earn a gold medal at the 2026 Olympics in Milan. Her coach and choreographer introduced her to the song, which was released about 27 years before she was born. It was a bold choice, but the song has lots of dynamic energy that Liu was able to channel into her routine. She also skated to it at the 2025 World Championships.