A few weeks ago, I had just moved into my new living situation for senior year.
Naturally, since myself and my roommates maintain a high degree of class, we brought along a record table and numerous albums to enjoy. Now when a couple of our friends came over for a completely lease–accommodating get-together, the obvious choice was to throw some tunes on for a little bit of what I call “social lubricant.”
But I eschewed my usual Spotify playlist, and turned to the table for a banger, when I found it: “Awesome Mix Vol.1 ,” from the “Guardians of The Galaxy ” soundtrack. Some classic rock standards — perfect.
The mood was up. But after a few tracks spun out, the record needed to be flipped, and I stopped to place the needle on the song that I knew would please, if only me.
“Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” crackled out of the stereo, and I was grooving.
Drink in my hand, I slid about the room, skating on ice throughout the house. Some light (heavy) mimicry of the main guitar solo, and a butchering of the chorus later, and I thought to myself, “damn, this song is awesome.”
Ironically, this song has a contentious contemporary history. Many who hear the track immediately think of their parents, and conceive of the track as stuffy and embarrassing, or simply nostalgia-bait for a time where things seemed so much simpler. Maybe it conjures up memories of the grating Capital One advertisement featuring Charles Barkeley, Samuel L. Jackson and Spike Lee singing the song off-key.
If you’ve ever been on a cruise, a bingo night at the bar, or simply spent what seems like too much time at the family cookout, you know that the song has one of those “white-people-be-like” reputations. Maybe you just started playing it in your headphones, to remind yourself what it sounds like. For me, it’s a groove, but that might be due in part to my funk addiction. Still, the song is steeped in this sort of embarrassing oral history that one cannot escape.
The main point of contention, in my opinion, is an aspect of the song that you either think is morally wrong, or you have never considered once in your life: the plot. In the song, lyricist Rupert Holmes writes about a man who has become bored of his wife. He doesn’t resent her, he just relates their marriage to “a worn out recording of a favorite song.” And while his wife sleeps next to him, he pulls out the paper, looks through the personal ads and spies an ad that reads: “If you like piña coladas…come with me and escape.”
The narrator expresses that he feels bad about what he does next, but he pens a letter in response to the ad.
“Yes I like pina coladas…I’ve got to meet you by tomorrow noon…at a bar called O’Malley’s, where we’ll plan our escape.”
Damn, what a heartless jerk. Our singer just confessed he plans to leave his wife, to run away with a mysterious woman, of which he only knows her preferred drink. He does this because he wants to escape the anguish of a boring life—because he has found his kindred spirit. Excitedly, he waits to meet with his dream woman.
But when she walks in: “I knew her smile in an instant, I knew the curve of her face. It was my own lovely lady, and she said ‘Oh, it’s you.’ Then we laughed for a moment, and I said, I never knew…”
Now hold on a minute, this is kind of a sweet story! Yes, they both wanted to cheat on each other (romance is dead, I know). But then they find that the person they’ve been searching for has been lying next to them the whole time. They can’t get mad at each other because each knows exactly what the other one was feeling, and they never cheated. Instead, they learn that they are each other’s dream person. All it took was a little bit of communication. A little bit morbid, but a lot of sweet, just like a real piña colada!