Birthday is the fourth studio album by the American band the Association. The album featured two hit singles, "Everything That Touches You", which hit number 10 in the charts,[4] and "Time for Livin'", which reached number 39.[4] This was the last LP by the group that spawned Top 40 hits. It peaked at number 23 in the Billboard charts.[5]
The song "MacArthur Park", which was first recorded by Richard Harris, was originally offered to the Association for inclusion on this album. Producer Bones Howes challenged Jimmy Webb to write a pop song that incorporated classical instrumentation and an odd time signature, which he planned to have the Association record. The song was rumored to be intended as a centerpiece for a twenty-four-minute cantata that would occupy one side of the record. This rumor was later debunked by Webb himself, who claimed there was only one composition. Nonetheless, the song was excluded because the group, being able songwriters themselves, were not willing to give up two to three of their songs for the sake of Webb's project.
Terry Kirkman on the Discogropheties podcast (recorded just prior to his death) stated that they were offered MacArthur Park only two or three days before a tour. There was no time to arrange or record it, and the album was mostly completed anyway.
When Harris, who had just performed a slew of musical numbers for the film adaptation of Camelot, contacted Webb for a possible collaboration, this was among the compositions that were in consideration. The Harris recording became lead single for his pop record debut, A Tramp Shining, and made its way onto the Billboard Hot 100 at number 79 on May 11, 1968, peaking at number 2 on June 22, 1968 behind Herb Alpert's "This Guy's in Love with You".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
[3] 
