Alysa Liu Made ‘MacArthur Park’ Go Viral With Her Gold Medal Win—and 79-Year-Old Songwriter Jimmy Webb Is ‘Elated’
Almost 60 years after it was first written, the song is bigger than ever thanks to the skating star's Olympic performance
Alysa Liu’s gold medal-winning free skate to Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” has captivated millions of Americans—and it’s easy to see why. The 20-year-old figure skater became one of the heroes of this year’s Winter Olympics thanks to her edgy yet playful style and her compelling redemption story. Liu retired at just 16 in 2022 after competing in her first Olympics, feeling that skating had overtaken her life, but she staged a dazzling comeback at the 2026 Games, becoming the first American woman to win figure skating gold since Sarah Hughes’ unexpected triumph in 2002.
With her striped halo-style hair dye and smiley piercing, Liu doesn’t fit the traditional ice princess image that’s long defined figure skating, and the joy she brought to her free skate is undeniably infectious. The fact that Liu won gold while having so much fun she practically floated on the ice has generated a much-needed conversation about female athletes doing what they love on their own terms, and the sight of her jumping and spinning to the campy disco drama of “MacArthur Park” while wearing a spangled gold costume became instantly iconic, spawning countless appreciative social media posts and changing the face of figure skating.
Alysa Liu’s skating victory hasn’t just made her a household name, it’s also kicked off a “MacArthur Park” resurgence, which has seen the song enter the top 10 on iTunes and be streamed 1,292% more than average on Spotify. Thanks to Liu’s skate, the song has reached a huge new audience, and its writer, Jimmy Webb, couldn’t be happier. Read on to learn about the long history of “MacArthur Park” and see what the songwriter and the skater have said about its surprising new life.
The origins of ‘MacArthur Park’: ‘The lyrics infuriate some people’
Singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb originally wrote “MacArthur Park” for the ’60s band the Association, but they rejected it, and he gave it to Richard Harris, the Irish actor known for his distinguished roles as King Arthur in Camelot and Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter movies. When Harris released the song in 1968, it became an unlikely hit, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earning Webb a Grammy for Best Arrangement.
“MacArthur Park” isn’t your typical pop song: It runs over seven minutes, and features an orchestra and lyrics that are both bizarre and evocative, with the famous line, “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,” but this quirkiness is part of what makes it so memorable.
In an interview with The Guardian, Webb shared the inspiration for his lyrics, saying, “The lyrics to ‘MacArthur Park’ infuriate some people . . . They think it’s a psychedelic trip. But everything in the song is real. There is a MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, near where my girlfriend worked selling life insurance. We’d meet there for lunch, and there would be old men playing checkers by the trees, like in the lyrics.”
As for that ill-fated cake, Webb explained, “I’ve been asked a million times: ‘What is the cake left out in the rain?’ It’s something I saw—we would eat cake and leave it in the rain. But as a metaphor for losing a chapter of your life, it seemed too good to be true. When she broke up with me, I poured the hurt into the song.”
How Jimmy Webb’s classic song made it to the Olympics
“MacArthur Park” has been covered over 200 times, and artists from Waylon Jennings to Frank Sinatra to Tony Bennett to “Weird Al” Yankovic have put their spin on it. The best-known cover version came in 1978, 10 years after the original, when disco queen Donna Summer recorded the song. Summer’s version of “MacArthur Park” became an even bigger hit than the original, reaching No. 1 on the Hot 100 and earning the singer her first Grammy nomination.
The “MacArthur Park” renaissance started in 2024, when both the original song and Summer’s version were used in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. With its mix of theatricality and whimsy, the song proved a natural fit for both Tim Burton’s spooky cinematic world and Alysa Liu’s exuberant energy on the ice. When Liu’s coach, Phillip DiGuglielmo, and choreographer, Massimo Scali, selected the song for her skate, the connection was instant, and her program won gold at the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships, a precursor to the Olympics.
Liu wasn’t originally familiar with “MacArthur Park” (which isn’t too surprising, considering she was born in 2005!). Initially, she had planned a free skate program set to a medley of Lady Gaga songs. While the Lady Gaga songs were a bold choice, Liu and her team felt “MacArthur Park” would create a more dynamic program that better showcased her personality, and in the lead-up to the Olympics, the skater said, “I always wanted to do ‘MacArthur Park’ for the individual free skate event.”
Jimmy Webb on the ‘MacArthur Park’ resurgence: ‘I am elated by it’
With “MacArthur Park” in the zeitgeist thanks to Alysa Liu’s Olympic championship, songwriter Jimmy Webb, now 79, has been enjoying a new wave of attention. In an interview with music critic Wayne Robins, Webb admitted that he was initially nervous to watch the Olympics due to the high stakes of the competition, but once he tuned in, he was amazed, saying, “I saw this angel, Alysa Liu, appear on the ice, dancing. Flying, soaring, really, to my old kind of beat-up song. And she filled it with new life and new enthusiasm. She brought me back to the kind of euphoria I used to feel in the studio when I was working with Richard Harris, and the orchestra would come in on that last chorus. And there was a tremendous feeling of joy, even though the lyric is sadly, you know, about failure. Overcoming failure. And it’s a very potent combination.”
Webb has had a prolific career. Outside of “MacArthur Park,” he’s known for writing many of country star Glen Campbell’s greatest hits, and he worked with other famed musicians like Linda Ronstadt, Art Garfunkel, the Supremes and Carly Simon throughout the ’60s and ’70s. “MacArthur Park” faced mockery over the years, and in the ’90s, the humorist Dave Barry even christened it the worst song ever. Webb told Robins that Liu’s skate has made him look at his signature song from a fresh perspective, remarking, “You know, that magic, that stardust kind of thing, where you ask yourself, ‘Did that really happen?’ The Olympics thing came out of nowhere for me. I am elated by it. Dare I say, it redeems ‘MacArthur Park’ as a song that doesn’t need to be made fun of. And I’m very happy right now. Very, very happy.”
The musician also recently shared a sweet video thanking Liu for using “MacArthur Park,” and in an Instagram post, he said, “I am unbelievably proud to play some small role in her inspiration. I am so impressed with her demeanor; she makes America proud again.” The magic of Jimmy Webb’s “MacArthur Park” spans nearly six decades, and in a time of great polarization, it’s heartwarming to see how the song has impacted people, whether they first heard it long ago or they just discovered it thanks to Alysa Liu.
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