How Many Pina Coladas to Get Drunk

1979 unmarried by Rupert Holmes

“Escape (The Piña Colada Vocal)”
Standard moving-picture show sleeve
Single past Rupert Holmes
from the album Partners in Crime
B-side	“Drop It”
Released	Oct 1979
Recorded	1979
Genre	Soft rock[1] [2]
Length	4:36 (album version) iii:50 (unmarried version)
Label	Infinity Records
Songwriter(s)	Rupert Holmes
Producer(s)	Rupert Holmes, Jim Boyer
Rupert Holmes singles chronology
“Let’s Get Crazy Tonight” (1978) “Escape (The Piña Colada Vocal)” (1979) “Him” (1980)

“Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” is a song written and recorded past British-born American singer Rupert Holmes for his album
Partners in Crime. Equally the lead single for the anthology, the popular song was recommended by
Billboard
for radio broadcasters on September 29, 1979,^[iii]
then added to prominent US radio playlists in Oct–November.^[iv]
Rising in popularity, the song peaked at the stop of December to get the final US number-one song of the 1970s.

Content

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The song speaks, in three verses and three choruses, of a man who is bored with his current relationship because it has go routine and he desires some variety. One twenty-four hours, he reads the personal advertisements in the paper and spots an ad that catches his attention: a woman seeking a man who, among other little things, must like piña coladas (hence it beingness known equally “the piña colada song”). Intrigued, he takes out an ad in reply and arranges to meet the adult female “at a bar called O’Malley’s”, just to find upon the meeting that the woman is actually his current partner. The vocal ends on an upbeat notation, showing the 2 lovers realized they have more in common than they had suspected and that they do not have to wait whatever further than each other for what they seek in a human relationship.

Background and writing

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Recorded for Holmes’south
Partners in Crime
(1979) album, the vocal came from an unused track for which Holmes wrote temporary or “dummy” lyrics. This version, “The Law of the Jungle”, was released as function of his
Cast of Characters
(2005) box ready and was inspired past a desire-advertisement he read whilst idly scanning the personals 1 day. As Holmes put information technology, “I idea, ‘what would happen to me if I answered this ad?’ I’d go and see if it was my ain wife who was bored with me.” The championship of the song was originally going to be “People Need Other People”, and was afterward to be revealed that it was a true story.

The chorus originally started with “If yous like Humphrey Bogart”, which Holmes changed at the concluding minute, replacing the role player with the proper name of the offset exotic cocktail that came to mind and fit the music.

The original lyrics said, “If you like Humphrey Bogart and getting caught in the rain.”…
Every bit I was getting on mic I thought to myself, I’ve washed so many movie references to Bogart and broad-screen cinema on my before albums, maybe I shouldn’t do one here.
I thought, What can I substitute? Well, this woman wants an escape, like she wants to go on vacation to the islands. When you lot go along vacation to the islands, when you sit down on the beach and someone asks you if you’d similar a drink, you lot never guild a Budweiser, you don’t have a beer. You lot’re on vacation, y’all want a drink in a hollowed-out pineapple with the flags of all nations and a parasol. If the beverage is blue y’all’d exist very happy. And a long straw. I idea, What are those escape drinks? Let’south see, there’due south daiquiri, mai tai, piña colada… I wonder what a piña colada tastes similar? I’ve never fifty-fifty had i.
I thought that instead of singing, “If yous similar Humphrey Bogart,” with the emphasis on
like, I could showtime it a syllable earlier and go, “If you like
piña-a coladas.”

—Rupert Holmes^{[5]
[half dozen]}

Holmes said in 2019 that he still does non drink piña coladas.^[7]

Reception and legacy

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The song shot up through the U.s.a. charts, becoming the country’southward last number-one
Billboard
Hot 100 hit of 1979 and of the 1970s. “Escape” was knocked out of the meridian spot but returned to number one on the
Billboard
Hot 100 chart during the second week of 1980, having been displaced for a week by KC and the Sunshine Band’south “Please Don’t Go”.^[viii]
Information technology was the first popular song to ascend to #1 on the
Billboard
pop chart in two unlike decades.^[9]
The song was the US’s 11th-best-selling single of 1980 on the
Billboard
Hot 100.^[10]
The vocal was likewise featured on “Waterworks”, the penultimate episode of the AMC idiot box series
Improve Call Saul, and titular protagonist Jimmy McGill sings it in “Nailed”.

Personnel

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• Rupert Holmes – vocals, keyboards, synthesizer
• Dean Bailin – guitar
• Frank Gravis – bass
• Leo Adamian – drums
• Steve Jordan – “double drumming” with Adamian

Charts

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Certifications

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Come across likewise

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• Listing of
  Billboard
  Hot 100 number-one singles of 1979
• List of
  Billboard
  Hot 100 number-ane singles of 1980

References

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