If You Like Pina Coladas...
How creative thinking led to a classic song
Do you ever hear a song and think “I wonder what inspired that”?
As it is Spring Break for many in the US, I thought now was a good time to dive in to a song that many associate with a beach vacation…
The Piña Colada Song.
But where did this song come from?
I was curious…
Our story begins in 1979, when singer/songwriter Rupert Holmes had a problem.
He was recording his fifth album, and needed some uptempo songs to go along with the ballads.
He was experimenting with a new arrangement for an uptempo song he’d written, but he wasn’t happy with the recording.
He did like 16 bars of the track, so decided to use them to create a new song.
Working with his producer and engineer, they did a primitive version of sampling, duplicating the 16 bars over and over again to create a 5-minute track.
Now Rupert had a track with a good rhythm, but no lyrics.
And he had one day left in the studio.
When he went home that night, he noticed the personal ads in The Village Voice.
He started thinking about how you might write a personal ad – and what might happen if you answered one of those ads.
And he decided to write a song that was a story, but with a twist ending.
He came up with a line for the chorus, ‘If you like Humphrey Bogart and getting caught in the rain’ and managed to write the lyrics before he was due at the studio the next morning.
Rupert was worried that the twist of his story would be too obvious, and that listeners would figure it out too quickly.
So he told his engineer to record him singing the song in one take, and asked his guitarist Dean Bailin to listen closely to the lyrics, and see if he could guess the ending.
Holmes hadn’t sung the song before, but wasn’t worried about getting the vocal perfect – he just wanted to see if his twist worked.
He reviewed his lyrics as he prepared to record the song, and paused at his line ‘Humphrey Bogart.’
“Humphrey Bogart conjured a black-and-white image,” he said.
“It was noir. That didn’t feel right with the characters in this story.
“The song was called Escape.”
Rupert began thinking about people escaping to the Caribbean, and what people drink when they’re on vacation in the islands – Mai Tais, daiquiris, piña coladas…
He had never had a piña colada, but decided on the spot to change the lyric from Humphrey Bogart to piña colada, and added an eighth note to make it work in the music.
Then he sang the song, in one take.
Because he hadn’t checked the lyrics against the track, he realized he had too many syllables in places (‘I’ve got to meet you by tomorrow noon’) – or too few in others (‘I am into champagne’) – but he made it work with the music.
“The vocal you hear on the record is the first time I ever sang the song,” he said.
“What you’re hearing is me having fun, and the excitement and exuberance of telling a joke for the first time to my guitar player Dean, to see if he gets the punchline before I get to it.”
When Dean confirmed that the twist worked, Holmes suggested they set aside the vocal and work on the instrumental break.
“If I had said ‘Humphrey Bogart’, I would have wanted to add a tenor sax, but I had conjured up this idea of the islands, so I wanted the instrumental break to sound like we were in the islands.”
He added flutes, a sliding guitar, and used a synthesizer to create the sound of a rolling surf across the break.
The combination created a “lustrous Hawaiian paradise style.”
“Had I kept the words ‘Humphrey Bogart’, I never would have made that break.”
When Holmes returned to re-record the vocal, he found he couldn’t get the energy or exuberance he had when he sang it the first time.
That’s why the first take became the version on the record.
“This was never going to be a single,” Rupert said.
“It was just some uptempo material for the album.”
Then the record label surprised him when they said they were putting Escape out as a single.
But they said people were referring to it as The Piña Colada Song – so they suggested adding that to the title in parentheses.
Escape (The Piña Colada Song) became a #1 hit and has remained a fixture of pop culture as it has been featured in dozens of TV shows and films over the last three decades, including Shrek, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Deadpool 2.
By using his creativity, Rupert Holmes took 16 bars of usable music – and created a hit.
Rupert has received 16 gold records and 15 platinum records over his career. He’s also written plays and novels, and won two Tony Awards.
But he will forever be associated with piña coladas.
“This one song absolutely completely changed the course of my life – and is still having an effect on it some 40 years later.”
Fun Fact: Rupert doesn’t live near the beach - or in New York City. He and his Cold Springs, NY home were featured in The New York Times in 2022.
One more thing…
Apparently it was difficult to get a piña colada in a US bar in 1979.
But not after Rupert’s hit …
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-Beth
Love this - how cool that they kept his original voice track in the final version. :)