Margaritaville (Song)

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    Remembering Jimmy Buffett, Beach Bum Bard

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    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicJimmy Buffett, who died this month at 76, was best known for one thing: making an island-friendly country-rock concoction that millions of listeners found to be a balm. He turned that balm into big business — “Margaritaville,” the song, was his lone Top 10 hit, and Margaritaville, the business he built atop it, became a licensing juggernaut and netted countless millions in revenue.But Buffett was other things as well — a clever, cheeky songwriter; a musician who fused styles from various regions; someone who held firm to his political values even if he only sometimes infused his songs with them.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Buffett’s unlikely rise to niche stardom; how he turned a way of life into a song, and that song back into a very profitable way of life; and the way in which his music sometimes extends beyond lifestyle soundtrack and into knottier emotional (and sometimes) political territory.Guest:Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Jimmy Buffett Died of Rare Form of Skin Cancer

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      The singer’s website said he had Merkel cell carcinoma for four years and died at his home on Long Island.Jimmy Buffett died of skin cancer at his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., on Long Island, according to a statement on the singer-songwriter’s website.After Mr. Buffett died on Friday at age 76, his site announced the death but did not give a cause or specify where he died. In an update over the weekend, the website said that he had Merkel cell carcinoma for four years. A rare and aggressive form of skin cancer, Merkel cell is diagnosed only about 2,500 times a year in the United States, and until recent years it had carried a life expectancy of five months.Mr. Buffett’s 1970s hits like “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” which mingled country-rock with bits of calypso melodies and had wry lyrics about the carefree life of boating and loafing at beachside bars, made him a cult hero on a huge scale.He sold at least 23 million albums in the United States alone, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, on par with Jimi Hendrix and the Beastie Boys. And Mr. Buffett’s annual tours — in which he usually appeared barefoot, in a comfy T-shirt or Hawaiian button-down — were hugely successful, drawing millions of fans who sang along, drank prodigiously and called themselves Parrot Heads.Mr. Buffett was one of pop music’s most successful and ambitious businessmen, building a huge empire on the brand of good times and island escapism that he sang about in his songs. That included Margaritaville restaurants and resorts, footwear, drink mixes and a 2018 Broadway jukebox musical, “Escape to Margaritaville.”This year, Forbes estimated his net worth at $1 billion, with $570 million attributed to his tours and recording and $140 million in planes, homes and his shares in Berkshire Hathaway — the holding company whose chairman and CEO is multibillionaire investor Warren Buffett, who had been a longtime friend. More

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      Jimmy Buffett Was More Than Just “Margaritaville”

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      There was wistfulness behind party tunes like “Margaritaville.” Buffett helped listeners feel like they’d earned the good times just by holding on.Jimmy Buffett built a pop-culture empire on the daydream of “wastin’ away again in Margaritaville”: just hanging out on a tropical beach, drink in hand, a little wistful but utterly relaxed. The empire’s cornerstone was his 1977 hit “Margaritaville,” a catalog of minor mishaps — a misplaced saltshaker, a cut foot — that were all easily soothed with “that frozen concoction.”It’s a countryish song with south-of-the border touches like marimba and flutes, a style jovially summed up as “Gulf and Western.” It’s a resort-town fantasy of creature comforts close at hand and, of course, it’s a drinking song. Buffett leveraged it into a major brand for restaurants, resorts, clothing, food and drink, as well as a perpetual singalong on his robust touring circuit, where his devoted fans — the Parrot Heads — gathered eagerly in their Hawaiian shirts.Buffett cannily marketed his good-timey image; it made him a billionaire. He came up with wry song premises like the one behind “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” which starts as the lament of an attempted vegetarian who can’t resist carnivorous impulses. He brought jokey wordplay to his song and album titles and his band name, the Coral Reefers, and he summed up his career with the boxed-set title “Boats, Beaches, Bars and Ballads.” Country singers like Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson and Zac Brown latched on to his seaside-and-booze themes and acknowledged his influence by sharing duets with him.But Buffett’s songwriting wasn’t all smiley and one-dimensional. “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane,” he sang in “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.” He wrote about characters with sadder-but-wiser back stories, like the 86-year-old who had lost his wife and son in wartime in “He Went to Paris,” the hapless robber in “The Great Filling Station Holdup” and the sometime smuggler in “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” who shrugs, “I feel like I’ve drowned, gonna head uptown.”As a conservationist Buffett also, humorously or humbly, contemplated the power and beauty of Nature in songs like “Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season”; its narrator writes a song as a storm moves in, but also worries, “I can’t run at this pace very long.” In “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On,” from his 2006 album “Take the Weather With You,” the singer looked back on what Hurricane Katrina had done to New Orleans.The backdrop to Buffett’s party tunes is often one of relief, not entitlement. He sings about mistakes, regrets, work, longing, nostalgia and, beginning decades ago, the inevitability of aging: “I can see the day when my hair’s full gray/And I finally disappear,” he sang on his 1983 song “One Particular Harbour,” a staple of his live sets.So the drinks and parties and vacations and boat trips, or finally being able to settle down in that place by the beach, became consolations for past troubles — even if those troubles were self-made. Buffett helped listeners feel like they’d earned the good times just by holding on long enough to enjoy them. The party was justified — reason enough to order another round. More

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      Jimmy Buffett, Hospitalized After Bahamas Trip, Cancels Show

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      The 76-year-old performer canceled a Saturday performance in Charleston, S.C., for unspecified health reasons. He had resumed touring this year after canceling a series of shows in October.Jimmy Buffett, the singer-songwriter who has built a lucrative lifestyle empire on the basis of beach-bum anthems like “Margaritaville” and “It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere,” canceled a show scheduled for Saturday in Charleston, S.C., after he was hospitalized for an unspecified illness.Mr. Buffett, 76, said in a statement on Thursday that he had a “sudden change of plans this week” after returning from a trip to the Bahamas.“I had to stop in Boston for a checkup but wound up back in the hospital to address some issues that needed immediate attention,” he said. “Growing old is not for sissies, I promise you.”Mr. Buffett said that he would perform again when he is “well enough.”A representative for Mr. Buffett responded to a request for information about his condition by referring to his statement and declined to comment further.It was unclear on Friday how long Mr. Buffett would refrain from performing. There were no events listed on his tour page, which told Parrotheads, as Mr. Buffett’s fans call themselves, to “stay tuned” for upcoming show announcements.Nick Pezzorello, the president of a Charleston-based Jimmy Buffett fan club, said that the Lowcountry Parrothead Club wished Mr. Buffett a “speedy recovery” so that his fans “may enjoy and celebrate his music and lifestyle for many more years to come.”“We will anxiously await his return to the Holy City,” Mr. Pezzorello said, referring to Charleston.It was the second time in seven months that Mr. Buffett has had to reschedule shows because of his health. Citing “health issues and brief hospitalization” in September, Mr. Buffett canceled five shows that had been planned in Las Vegas, San Diego, Salt Lake City and Nampa, Idaho, in October.“On doctor’s orders, he must take this time to recuperate and heal,” an announcement on Mr. Buffett’s website said in September.Mr. Buffett was soon back on the road, performing monthly since February. He rescheduled and performed two shows in Las Vegas in March and one in San Diego in early May. He also played in Key West, Fla., and Phoenix.Last month, his hit “Margaritaville” from the 1977 album, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” was among 25 recordings that were added to the National Recording Registry.The registry, which is part of the Library of Congress, designates recordings that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” and “worthy of preservation for all time.”When “Margaritaville” was released, the song stayed on the sales charts for months, “scoring with pop and country audiences alike, as well as teenagers and adults,” the Library of Congress said in a statement in April.The song celebrates a life of sunny leisure and frozen drinks, from the opening lines, “nibblin’ on sponge cake, watchin’ the sun bake,” to its earworm refrain, “wastin’ away in Margaritaville, searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt.”“Today, its lyrics are as memorized as any song in history,” the Library of Congress said, adding that the song is “as well known and omnipresent as ever — a regular component of bars, beach parties, karaoke and any place cool vibes are required.” More