Yes it’s wore out but I still love it. One of my favorite lyrics comes from this song. I blew out my flip flop, Stepped on a pop top, Cut my heel had to cruise on back home. I don’t know why but I just love that line. When Buffett wrote this he wrote his career. He had hits before but this one changed everything.
I’ve seen Jimmy Buffett twice and it’s like going to a giant beach party. If you ever get a chance it’s a fun concert to go to. I’ve only owned one album by Buffett. “Songs You Know By Heart” a greatest hits collection released in 1985. It has everything I like except one song…Door Number 3.
Buffett wrote this song in Key West, Florida, after he finished a tour with his group, the Coral Reefer Band. They had just toured Texas, and Buffett spent some time drinking margaritas in a Mexican restaurant with a friend before going back to Key West. When he got there, he sat at the Old Anchor Inn watching a traffic jam on the roads and used it as inspiration as he composed the song.
Buffett recorded this song at Criteria Studios in Miami with producer Norbert Putnam.
The song peaked at #8 in the Billboard 100 and #4 in Canada in 1977.
Producer Norbert Putnam: “One day in the studio, he comes in and starts telling me about a day he had in Key West. He was coming home from a bar and he lost one of his flip-flops and he stepped on a beer can top and he couldn’t find the salt for his Margarita. He says he’s writing lyrics to it and I say ‘That’s a terrible idea for a song.’ He comes back in a few days later with ‘Wasted Away Again In Margaritaville’ and plays it and right then everyone knows it’s a hit song. Hell, it wasn’t a song – it was a movie.”
From Songfacts
Regarding the success of this song, Buffett said: “I was lucky enough to get my thumb on the pulse beat of what people perceived the tropics to be.”
“Margaritaville” has come to symbolize a carefree Caribbean lifestyle – what some in Key West call “Keys disease.” For many, the only time they experience this way of living is on vacations or at Jimmy Buffett concerts. Buffett has a lot of fans who work very hard, make a lot of money, and use his music as an escape.
Buffett was born in Mississippi and raised in Alabama. He didn’t come to Key West, Florida, until 1971, when he was 24 years old. As a transplant, he had a perspective on the area that natives don’t, which helped him capture the ethos in this song.
Buffett has always loved sailing, and when this song became a hit, he was thrilled because he could buy his own boat. He has said that even if he was a one-hit wonder, he would have been happy with his boat sailing around the islands.
When Buffett sings about how he “Stepped on a pop-top” and cut his heel, requiring a cruise back home to enjoy a margarita, he’s referring to pull-off tops from soda and beer cans that caused a litany of minor injuries as they were often thrown on the ground and then stepped on by poor souls who blew out their flip-flops. In the late ’70s, the pop-tops were replaced with much safer non-removable round “pop-down/pop-in” tabs.
Buffett owns Margaritaville stores in Key West, New Orleans, Jamaica, Charleston, and Orlando. They sell clothing and other items inspired by the song.
Former Van Halen vocalist Sammy Hagar covered this for his 2013 Sammy Hagar & Friends album. His version is a duet with Toby Keith. He told Rolling Stone that it took him a long time to figure out that the country star would be a good fit for his version. “He’s like my closest friend,” said Hagar, “in country, for sure, and one of the most typical Cabo Wabo heads. We’ve sat in Cabo Wabo and played ‘Margaritaville’ there 35 times, if not more. And to not realize until after I cut ‘Margaritaville’ that I should get Toby to do the duet on it?”
This cover is also included as a bonus track on the Deluxe version of Toby Keith’s Drinks After Work album.
Prior to this Top 10 hit, Buffett’s highest-charting single on the Hot 100 was “Come Monday,” which peaked at #30 in 1974. “Margaritaville” also landed at #13 on the Country tally.
In 2016, this was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
This is referenced in Blake Shelton’s 2004 hit “Some Beach,” which finds Shelton “Singing ‘Margaritaville’ and minding my own.”
In 1999, Buffett joined Alan Jackson in a recording of this for Jackson’s album Under The Influence. In Buffett’s original version, he knows wasting away in Margaritaville is his own fault, but in Jackson’s version the singers blame each other before they finally admit “it’s our own damn fault.”
In The Simpsons episode “Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious” (1997), this is sung by the nanny Shary Bobbins and Barney Gumble.
It was also used in these TV shows:
Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist (“Zoey’s Extraordinary Neighbor” – 2020)
9-1-1 (“Triggers” – 2019)
Hawaii Five-0 (“Make Me Kai” – 2017)
And in these movies:
The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019)
The Beach Bum (2019)
Anger Management (2003)
Margaritaville
Nibblin’ on sponge cake
Watchin’ the sun bake
All of those tourists covered with oil
Strummin’ my six string on my front porch swing
Smell those shrimp they’re beginnin’ to boil
Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my long lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
But I know it’s nobody’s fault
Don’t know the reason
Stayed here all season
Nothing to show but this brand new tattoo
But it’s a real beauty
A Mexican cutie
How it got here I haven’t a clue
Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
Now I think hell it could be my fault
I blew out my flip flop
Stepped on a pop top
Cut my heel had to cruise on back home
But there’s booze in the blender
And soon it will render
That frozen concoction that helps me hang on
Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
But I know it’s my own damn fault
Yes and some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
And I know it’s my own damn fault
Whenever Jimmy passes the mention of this song will at be in at least the first two paragraphs of his obit. Great song.
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Great post and love the opening line “Nibbling on Sponge Cake”
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Where’s the salt wheres the GD salt.. ?
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Lot of people can relate to this song, especially when on vacation., in my opinion.
One of my favorites.
Regards and goodwill blogging
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For the longest time before I read the lyrics, I always thought he was singing, “Stepped on a pop tart” and I actually like that better, but it would be hard to cut your foot on a pop tart. However he could have changed the next line, “Cut my heel had to cruise on back home” to “Got all of this gunk stuck between my toes”.
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I did too
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Not the same ring to it! Of course now we don’t have as many of those metal pop tops.
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My mondegreen on that was, it sounded like he said “Stepped on a pod pock.” My young self didn’t know what a pod pock was but, I sang it, anyway. LOL!
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You sound like Weird Al Yankovic. LOL!
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Yes it’s been way overplayed, and no I don’t listen to it much anymore when it comes on the radio, but I think it’s a great song. It belongs on a pedestal, imo. Jimmy captured an essence for sure.
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I never would do this but you said you like these updates…look at the post yesterday morning before She Loves you.
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Oh yes, I saw it from my phone when I was on the road yesterday, and was going to look again when I could see the pictures on my computer screen. I do appreciate the reminder!
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I promise I’m not pushing! lol… just as long as you saw it.
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I know you weren’t pushing. You knew I’d want to see it!
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I like it. There’ve been bigger hit songs but not bigger money-makers…he made an entire diverse corporation out of that one little ditty!
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I went to his place right before the Who and had a couple of beers.
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“Margaritaville” is my go-to example of songs where the chorus changes slightly. I love the song’s gradual acceptance of responsibility for the sloshed state of the singer.
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I also like that…it’s like listening to him real time as he drinks
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The lost shaker of salt line kind of kills it for me.
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Great chill out tune. You can’t really beat the original.
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Quintessential Buffet.
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Not sure it gets any better than this. Now I want to heat the beach and have a drink and I don’t really drink, but I would if I could be at the beach.
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I like this well enough when it came out, but just cannot bear to listen to it any longer.
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I think “Margaritaville” may be the only Jimmy Buffet song I know. Undoubtedly, this one’s a classic!
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It is a classic… you probably know a song called “Come Monday” it was a huge song also
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That one didn’t sound familiar. Perhaps it wasn’t as popular in Germany as Margaritaville, which I’m pretty sure I first heard there on the radio.
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He is fun in concert…it’s like one big party with the tropical sounding music and, beach balls everywhere…
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I love the tropics, and the lifestyle. I’ve done Key West 3 times, and Orlando at least 20 times, and if you get singers doing early-evening bar versions of hit songs…yeh pretty much this one will pop up 🙂 Jimmy Buffet stuff is everywhere in Florida, it wouldn’t hurt to make it the official State anthem…. 🙂
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Yea and his concerts follow that. There is always a beach ball being tipped around and a party atmosphere.
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