Margaritaville


"Margaritaville" is a 1977 song by American popular music singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett from the album Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes. This song was written about a drink Buffett discovered at Lung's Cocina del Sur restaurant at 2700 W. Anderson Lane in Austin, Texas, and the first huge surge of tourists who descended on Key West, Florida, around that time. He wrote most of the song one night at a friend's house in Austin, and finished it while spending time in Key West. In the United States "Margaritaville" reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and went to number one on the Easy Listening chart, also peaking at No. 13 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Billboard ranked it number 14 on its 1977 Pop Singles year-end chart. It Buffett's highest charting solo single.
Named for the cocktail margarita, with lyrics reflecting a laid-back lifestyle in a tropical climate, "Margaritaville" has come to define Buffett's music and career. The relative importance of the song to Buffett's career is referred to obliquely in a parenthetical plural in the title of a Buffett greatest hits compilation album, Songs You Know By Heart: Jimmy Buffett's Greatest Hit. The name has been used in the title of other Buffett compilation albums such as and is also the name of several commercial products licensed by Buffett. The song also lent its name to the 2017 musical Escape to Margaritaville, in which it is featured alongside other Buffett songs. Continued popular culture references to and covers of it throughout the years attest to the song's continuing popularity. The song was mentioned in Blake Shelton's 2004 single "Some Beach".
"Margaritaville" has been inducted into the 2016 Grammy Hall of Fame for its cultural and historic significance.

Content

The song is about a man spending an entire season at a beach resort community. The three verses describe his day-to-day activities. In the first verse, he passes his time playing a six-string guitar on his front porch swing, watching tourists sunbathe, all the while eating sponge cake, and waiting for a pot of shrimp to boil. In the second verse, all he has to show for his time is a tattoo of a woman, but he cannot remember how he got it. In the third and final verse, while the narrator was going out for a walk, he blew his Flip-flops and cuts the heel of his foot by stepping on a "pop-top", forcing the narrator to come home, and ease his pain, with a fresh batch of margaritas.
The three choruses reveal that the narrator is drowning his sorrows over a failed romance; all the while onlookers speculate that an ex-girlfriend is at fault. The last line of each shows his shifting attitude toward the situation: first "it's nobody's fault," then "hell, it could be my fault," and finally "it's my own damn fault."

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Other versions

Single edit

When "Margaritaville" was released to radio stations in 1977, the single edit ran for 3:20, and it cuts another minute off of that, which made the song more radio friendly:
In 1999, American country singer Alan Jackson covered the song on his album Under the Influence. The cover featured Buffett singing along on the third and final verse; it also peaked at No. 63 after receiving play as an album cut.
Jimmy Buffett also re-recorded this song as well as "Cheeseburger in Paradise" and "Volcano" specifically for Rock Band as downloadable content.

Parodies

In 2006, Kenan Thompson did a parody of the song during the Weekend Update segment on Saturday Night Live, where he plays a soldier who found out he was going to the U.S.-Mexico border, rather than Baghdad. When Amy Poehler asks him what his reaction was when he discovered he was going to the border, in the next shot, he has a Corona banner above him, a sombrero on his head. He is swaying a Corona beer bottle and singing, "Wasting away again not in Iraq." This was likely a parody on Mortaritaville, which was recorded around 2 years prior.
In 2013, a parody has aired on the John Boy & Billy Big Show titled "Martinsville", referencing Martinsville Speedway.

Merchandising

As Buffett's signature song, "Margaritaville" has been used in a number of commercial ventures and product licensing tie-ins including: