It’s a cold rainy day in the middle of the winter, and you go to put on some music to lift your spirits from maybe a bad test, a break up or really anything and Jimmy Buffet comes on. It almost seems impossible to stay sad with the uplifting words of Jimmy Buffet Comes on.
Let’s look at “Last Mango In Paris” from Jimmy Buffet’s album Last Mango In Paris. The song is about a day when he went to the world famous restaurant Captain Tonys in the Florida Keys.
Jimmy Buffet then starts the main part of the song — “He said I ate the last mango in Paris/ Took the last plane out of Saigon/ Took the first fast boat to China/ And Jimmy there’s still so much to be done.” With some minor jabs at people calling Jimmy Buffet slow moving the song moves into the next stanza “On The first fast boat to China.” He is trying to exemplify the craziness and unpredictability of life and all of the twists and turns life takes along the way.
Jimmy Buffet then, through the next to stanzas, continues to exemplify the idea of life being unforeseeable by talking about adventures needing protection from “a third world girl in Buzios” as he traveled around the world.
Buffet continues to exemplify the idea of focusing on the wonders with talking about “had a damn good run on Wall Street With my high fashion model wife I woke up dry beneath the African sky Just me and my Swiss Army knife.” and how you never know what is going to happen next in life whether it is the good, the bad, or the ugly.
The song goes on for a few more stanzas, but the main idea is always there: you have to be able to move with life’s strange ways. Jimmy Buffet is one of the few artists that can just calm the soil with the smoothness of his words and simple but complex meanings of his songs.
Hi am Ben, I am a Staff writer here at the Mycenaean. I am also a curler and a part of Model UN.