“Someone left a cake out in the rain”

Baking is the broad theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week. Nobody knows why – but then again, why not?

Anyway, seeing that prompt took me straight back to this compelling oddity from 1968: Richard Harris singing Jimmy Webb. Anything was possible back then.

On a more serious note, leaving aside the baking imagery, this is actually a fine set of lyrics about lost love that never dies.

Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed
In love’s hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants

MacArthur’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, no

I recall the yellow cotton dress
Foaming like a wave
On the ground around your knees
The birds, like tender babies in your hands
And the old men playing checkers
By the trees

There will be another song for me
For I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warm
And never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
You’ll still 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
And after all the loves of my life
Oh, after all the loves of my life
I’ll be thinking of you
And wondering why

Written by Jimmy Webb

Song Lyric Sunday 19 July 2020