Fashion
What Is That Song in ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’?
Meet the new “Day-O”: Richard Harris’s 1968 psychedelic pop hit “MacArthur Park,” which Donna Summer remade as a disco anthem.
Some spoilers follow.
It’s the climactic moment in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
Our title trickster has Lydia right where he wants her, in a red gown standing beside him before a priest at the altar. She has agreed to marry him in order to save the life of her daughter. A towering cake is rolled out, topped with slimy green icing and Lydia and Beetlejuice figures.
And then … the cake starts to run.
“MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark / All the sweet, green icing flowing down,” a male voice intones (“sings” would be too generous) as the possessed wedding party — including Lydia’s stepmother, Delia (Catherine O’Hara) — flap around the cake, taking turns lip-syncing verses.
The nonsensical sequence, which the film’s director, Tim Burton, has said was largely improvised, sets the tone for a wedding from hell. The song seems as odd a choice as the use of Harry Belafonte’s version of the Jamaican folk tune “Day-O” to score the dinner-table possession scene in Burton’s original 1988 film.
What is that song? Why did Burton tap it as the new “Day-O”? What do the lyrics mean? Here’s a guide.
What is that song?
It’s “MacArthur Park,” a folk-pop ballad the singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb wrote in 1967. It was inspired by scenes he had observed while occasionally meeting his high school sweetheart, Susie Horton, for lunch in the real-life MacArthur Park in Los Angeles.
Who ‘sings’ it?
If you are a Harry Potter fan who said it almost sounds like … no, it can’t be … well, it is.
New flash: Richard Harris, who played the Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films, was also a musical artist.
