Margaritaville

"Margaritaville" is a 1977 song by Jimmy Buffett. The song was a huge hit when it was released and is still popular today. It topped the Billboard charts at No. 1 in the "Adult Contemporary" category and at No. 8 for "Pop Singles." This song is mostly responsible for giving Buffett the beach bum persona he has had since the song's release. It is also the name of several licensed products.

Related Topics:
1977 - Song - Jimmy Buffett - Today - Billboard - Beach bum - Several licensed products

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The song is more or less a narration of the singer's life for the past season. He sings about walking about in a drunken haze in a beach community. The eponymous "Margaritaville" is the mental state he exists in during this period, induced—predictably—from the perpetual imbibing of margaritas. The song begins with the singer going for a walk, but cutting his heel and returning home to ease his pain with his favorite alcoholic beverage. The singer says that some friends surmise that he is reeling from a failed romance, but the singer concludes, at the end of the song, that is not a victim of lost love, but of his own laziness.

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The song's opening gives a vivid descriptive of the singer's lifestyle in the beach town of Key West:

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:Nibblin' on sponge cake,

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:Watchin' the sun bake,

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:All of those tourists covered with oil.

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:Strummin' my six-string,

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:On my front porch swing,

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:Smell those shrimp they're beginnin' to boil.

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The song's chorus best summarizes the theme of the song:

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:Wastin' away again in Margaritaville,

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:Searchin' for my lost shaker of salt.

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:Some people claim that there's a woman to blame,

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:Now I think, Hell, it could be my fault.

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