The #1 song in the country this week was Jimmy Buffett's "Margaritaville", forty-six years after its original release. This is mostly to celebrate the life of one of the legitimately "good guys" in the music industry. An occasional pot smoking, cocktail swilling dad rocker who owned several businesses and by all accounts stood behind his employees in a way that should be taught to the soulless pieces of shit who own 90% of the businesses in The United States.  Look up Jimmy Buffet and Hurricane Katrina for a ton of feel good stories.

He's mostly known for his songs from the 70s and early 80s, when his tropically inspired rock was at its most marketable. But the truth is, he never stopped being an interesting songwriter, and his band only ever got better as it aged.

I imagine most people, if they were going to make a multi album discography of Buffett would either lean in to this early work or else simply do their own personal version of "Songs You Know By Heart" (hey, I did that!) and then make a second album of everything after that. 

I understand that urge, and will probably make just three albums, the third being everything after 1996. This album exists because it contains the albums that came out during my high school and early college years when I was most easily influenced. I bought "Songs You Know By Heart" in high school because I had several friends, some coworkers from Cape Cod, some school friends from around the world, who loved him and exposed me to his most popular songs. I think that whole album was on the jukebox in my high school snack bar/performance venue. Then, a coworker took me to one of Buffett's live shows, and then I went to college in Florida. So this is the era I most listened to Buffett and am, thus more knowledgeable about it than any other point in his career. And I loved these albums. So please accept this as my "Songs I Know By Heart And Wish More People Knew All The Lyrics To." 

1.​ After getting into Buffett mainly through the Songs You Know By Heart album, I hesitantly bought the first album released after I "discovered" him, Fruitcakes. Everybody's Got A Cousin In Miami is the delightful first song on the album that convinced me I was going to like his new work as much as his classics. It was bright and silly and made me wish I was drinking a virgin cocktail (I was underage.) It's kind of the perfect "Oh, did you know his career continued after his Greatest Hits album?" opening track.

2. The title track for this imaginary album isn't one that's stuck with me over the years. The lyrics are a little stupider than I usually like (I mean, what do you expect from a song called Mental Floss?) but they're refreshingly common man for someone who was incredibly wealthy by the time he wrote them. The harmonica playing off the steel drums is such an unusual combination that it adds a complexity that the song doesn't lyrically warrant.

3. Ballad Of Skip Wiley was made to sound famliar. The baseball stadium organ playing, the 1970s stage musical background vocals and riffs, the vocalist speaking over the bridge rather than singing. Surely, you've heard this song before, even if you don't know any of the words. This song is based on a novel from the 1960s about a reporter who loves his home state of Florida so much that he goes to extremes to protect its honor. I may have to track that book down.

4. I didn't include any of the songs from Buffett's Christmas Island album because I'm just not a fan of holiday music 360 days of the year. But I'm sure Buffett's take on December holiday songs are at least different from most rock or pop stars'. This isn't a December Holiday song, though. This is Buffett reminding you that you need to take some time off from work, and you should probably do it somewhere warm near an ocean. This might be the earliest reference Buffett makes to The Internet, which he suggests you take a break from. Musically, it's middle of the road Buffett, not a ton of creativity but the trumpet solo leading into the steel drum solo is a refreshing breeze of nostalgic air.

5. The early 20th century symphonic swell at the start of this song quickly quiets down to just guitar plucking, piano twinkling, and steel drums for Blue Heaven Rendez-Vous, which certainly has "My Blue Heaven" vibes, which I've been a proponent of ever since I fell in love with the same titled Steve Martin/Rick Moranis/Joan Cusack film that probably hasn't aged very well.  This is just a simple mid-late twentieth century lounge number that could be found in any mediocre 80s or 90s romantic drama ... or a restaurant scene in a Muppets movie. I would love to hear Rowlf cover this.

6. Some soft drumbeats and guitars climb into this tropical soft rock declaration that Buffett never wants to be too famous so he's been Quietly Making Noise to achieve the level of fame he's most comfortable with. It's a sweet country fair sing-along style track.

7. The next track is a meditation on the importance of Buffett's songwriting, which makes it a good follow-up to "Quietly Making Noise." It also has some lyrics that remind you that no matter how wealthy and white Buffett and his followers tend to be, his politics are surprisingly liberal, if often absent from his work. Here he muses Are we destined to be ruled by a bunch of old white men/Who compare the world to football and are programmed to defend? Only Time Will Tell.

8. Fruitcakes is the longest track on this album, just a shade longer than the opening track. It's one of his songs referencing his book Where Is Joe Merchant?, specifically the rocket scientist, Desdemona. This is a delightfully silly song bemoaning political, religious, romantic, and scientific excess. It's also a powerful revolutionary song demanding the return of Junior Mints to theaters.

9. If there's a Whiter, Soft Rockier concept than Jimmy Buffett covering a James Taylor song, I haven't heard it. I was unfamiliar with the original​ until I heard this version. It's a daydream about life would be like in Mexico as imagined/written/sung by someone who's never been there, but would like to. It's then infused with a bunch of references to Buffett songs and stories.

10. I remember hearing the story of how Jimmy Buffett, Bono, and Bono's family were in a plane in Jamaica that was shot at by police who suspected it was a drug-running plane. Jamaica Mistaica is Buffett's processing of the event from his perspective with a chorus from the perspective of the apologietic Jamaican police begging them to come back/come back/come back to Jamaica, promising that the next time they fly there they won't shoot (them) outta the sky.

11. The Night I Painted The Sky is a piano ballad about being a kid and watching a Fourth of July fireworks display. Super simple, and sweet. With a harmonica solo.

12. Lage Nom Ai is a song I loved from the first time I heard the Barometer Soup album, but whose name I could never remember. The title is an integral part of the chorus, and is from the French Caribbean Patois, meaning "the man who gave up his own name", which the song reminds the listener repeatedly. 

13. Shortly after Buffett's passing, I saw a couple of his videos where his daughter, Delaney, interviews him about some of his lesser-known songs. The first video I clicked on was him reminiscing about Delaney's childhood where he specifically talks about how she chase(d) cats through Roman ruins/stomps on big toadstools, and about a party where Delaney Talks To Statues and otherwise behaves like an endearingly weird child. It's like a slightly less saccharine version of Billy Joel's "Lullaby (Goodnight, My Angel)."
 
14. The second cover on the album is a steel drum version of The Grateful Dead's Uncle John's Band. It's to his credit that I like this song, as I'm not a big fan of The Grateful Dead's music. But this is a direct, lyric-centric cover of one of the jam band's most famous songs.

15. The 90s were the decade of The Hidden Track at the end of the CD. Treetop Flyer is Buffett's hidden track from Banana Wind. It's a Stephen Sills solo track (I didn't know Stills had solo albums until I did a deep dive on this track) from his debut album. It's slightly more country rock than Buffett usually leans but the lyrics about flying low to not get caught certainly harkens back to "Jamaica Mistaica," which was on the same album.

16. Lone Palms sounds like it would be more at home on Songs You Know By Heart. It's a smooth ballad about tropical living. It doesn't stretch Buffett's 70s/80s sensibilities. Even the lyrics seem more like his stoic 20s & 30s then the material he was writing in the 90s.

17. We close out the album with one of Buffett's favorite tropes from the era, writing about missing his childhood, discovering your heart/again and again. Jimmy Dreams is also a sweet memorial to him with just the right touch of steel drums. 

There are two things at fault for me posting a Jimmy Buffet discography.

1.) Famed poet, and generally good human, Sam Mercer posted a confession that they'd reached the point in life where they found themselves enjoying Jimmy Buffet.

2.) Two days before my body imploded in 2019, and I had to refigure my way back into my life, my mother, her husband, and I went out for a day of minigolf and dinner just outside of Universal Studios. Dinner was at Margaritaville. Despite the fact that I hadn't been cognizant of hearing a Jimmy Buffet song since 1995 (I'm sure I heard snippets here and there in groceries store and from passing cars), I knew every lyric of every song that played while we ate. And they were all, of course, Jimmy Buffet songs.

I will forever know all of them, even when riddled with dementia and confused about my husband's name.

This, I think will be a two disc journey. Possibly, a third? There are songs past Jimmy's greatest hits that I'm familiar with, and enjoy, but there are now 28 years of his music that I haven't yet been exposed to, and I, therefore, can't tell you whether or not I enjoy it. Time will tell.

But here is the album of songs that I can never forget. Whether I can blame the jukebox where I went to high school, the coworker who played Songs You Know By Heart non-stop in the summer of 1993, the coworker that convinced me to go to a Jimmy Buffet concert in 1994, or my grandfather who used to play the eight tracks of some of Buffet's 70s albums when we were on his boat (natch).

1. What, did you think I was going to start out with "Margaritaville"? Nah. We'll get there. This is the ridiculous song where Jimmy Buffet plays guitars and sings like he always sings, but when he gets to the chorus, people put their hands together over their heads to resemble shark Fins and move them to the left and the right, as if it was a dance. Look, most old white people can't clap on rhythm, and this is at close as most of them get to dancing. Let them have this.

2. I think this is the only cover on the album but Brown Eyed Girl is one of those few songs that is definitively associated with both the original artist, Van Morrison, and a particular artist, in this case Buffet, who didn't slow the tempo down or speed it up, didn't change any of the lyrics, just included some steel drums at the beginning and end, and that somehow also made it his song. I don't know how these things happen, how is "Smooth Criminal" so closely associated with both Michael Jackson and Sum 41? 

3. Our first ballad on the album comes in on a slow harmonica. A Pirate Looks At Forty is a beautiful boat ballad. I don't have any snark for this. Like most of his famous slow songs, it borders on country while still having his distinctive tropic Florida flair.

4. Drunk people screaming is a good way to power out of the last track and into the very silly The Weather Here, I Wish You Were Beautiful. Right near the beginning of the song, Buffet pronounces mosquitoes in the most puzzlingly obvious ways I've ever heard. Like they're parasitical charcoal from Texas. If you asked me what this song is about at any point in my life, I wouldn't be able to tell you, but if you start playing it, I'll be able to sing along with every word. Somehow.

5. He might not be able to pronounce mosquitoes but at least he sings Manana properly. He's probably helped more white boomers learn how to properly say this word than Duolingo. This is a sweet take on the Don't Leave Me song that every balladeer rocker or country artist wrote in the 70s and 80s. At one point, he tells the band to make the song Reggae, and they are about as successful as Sting or UB40 on that front.

6. If you're ever at one of Buffet's Margaritaville restaurants, and you hear the opening strums of Volcano, be prepared for the sirens to go off, for the drunk Parrotheads to start chanting like they're at a WWE live show, and for "lava" to pour out of the faux volcano, and into the Vat of Margarita that lives behind the bar. I'm sure the rumors that the lava come from a pipe in the bathroom are just hyperbole. The song, itself, is pretty catchy, in that 70s AM sigalong way that Buffet is such a master of.

7. Love And Luck is probably the least known song on this album, if you're not a Parrothead. The beginning just reminds me so much of Toto's "Africa" that I couldn't help but love this song in high school. It veers pretty quickly into its own thing, but that familiarity, and the requisite 80s horn riff just call to me from 1984 and will not let me go.

8. When I was in high school and had to own every artist's complete discography on CD, as opposed to just having the Greatest Hits albums, even if those were the only songs I knew, Changes In Latitude, Changes In Attitudes, was the first Buffet album I bought. If we weren't all crazy, we would go insane was pretty much the slogan of the dorm I lived in.

9. The previous song just perfectly transitions into Cheeseburgers In Paradise, probably Buffet's second most well-known song. In a world where we didn't constantly reward songs about heartbreak and overcoming adversity, this ode to a very American food would probably have been a #1 hit. The breakdown is delightfully stupid.

10. Taking it down a notch, we get to Grapefruit, Juicy Fruit a ballad about chewing gum and daydreaming that sounds more tropical and breathy than it probably deserves. 

11. I think I was in the midst of reading Tom Robbins's Skinny Legs and All for not the first time when I first heard When Salome Plays The Drums, which may be why I enjoy it so much. Or it's the background vocals, or the line about setting phasers to stun. 

12. One Particular Harbor is very Eaglesy (Buffet did open for them near the end of their initial career). The Tahitian intro translates to Nature lives (life to nature)/Have pity for the Earth (Love the Earth). It sounds much more environmental than the navel-gazing about the meaning of time's passage English lyrics.

13. Every 80s singer songwriter has to have some love song with a very instantly dated chorus that places it solidly in the cocaine and Rubik's Cube era. Money Back Guarantee, with its, obviously, saxaphone riffs, and a reference to Ginsu knives. is Buffet's.  

14. I didn't know where to put Boat Drinks for the longest time. It's one of the few Buffet songs where I can always recognize the lyrics, but can't recognize whichsong it is from the intro music. It's a weird little ditty about cabin fever that features at least the second Star Trek reference on this album.  

15. And that brings us to ...drum roll, please... Margaritaville. Now the name of his tiny empire of resorts in Florida, as well as the name of his restaurants. His most famous song. The most famous song about salt. The second most famous song about tequila. The first 1970s song I ever heard that seemed to be anti-misogynist without aggressively and almost falsely being anti-misogynist. It's a nice change of pace from songs about how women are always hurting male singers' feelings.

16. Pascagoula Run is a lesser-known Buffet track about being adventurous in world travel and love. And it gives time to women being adventurous and promiscuous, too, wthout casting any judgement. It's another outlier in 70s songwriting.

17. But, you know, let's flip that well-meaningness and get into the very silly, but pro-consent Why Don't We Get Drunk. I had a coworker who had three jobs working with children, who loved Jimmy Buffet, and would always play the Songs You Know By Heart even when the kids were around. But she always sang "...IN A LIGHTBULB" after the word screw. Because promoting alcoholism to children is fine.

18. Seeing death as just being Incommunicado is a fascinatingly immature way to way approach it. Buffet talks about his reaction to the death of John Wayne, while Buffet is on a road trip, and how real people rarely day with the bravado of characters in literature and cinema.

19. The Great Filling Station Holdup can be seen as part two of Incommunicado. Buffet is still driving, but he stops at a gas station and robs it because gas is expensive. FIFTY CENTS A GALLON. Ooof. Anyhow, Buffet realizes that the haul from the gas station wasn't really worth it.

20. In the previous song, Buffet lamented he wished he was somewhere other than here. Now he wishes he had a Pencil Thin Mustache. The song is about nostalgia for childhoold, a common Gen X and Millenial theme, but his references (from a song about nostalgia written in the 70s) are soon going to be a think only nerds specializing in early-mid-20th century America trivia know. It also includes one of the only ad jingles as song lyrics you'll hear in any artist discography that I post.

21. The honkey-tonk piano leading into the 80s bright horns and guitarr rifs at the beginning of Domino College are the big draw for me. I only go back to school in nightmares. Haunted background vocals or not.

22. Son Of A Son Of A Sailor  is the beginning of the cooldown to the end of the album, not that I'd call any of the songs on this album anything more than humid. It's on theme with "A Pirate Looks At Forty" as a song of self-reflection with a focus on traveling to exotic (read: non-American) places.

23. The long distant love song is a 70s/80s classic. Guaranteed to involve a pay phone reference. If The Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me is Buffet's take on how he can't call the one he loves and misses because he's on a boat in the ocean. Like that's his entire persona. He can't call you. Cell phones had barely been invented, and certainly didn't get any bars in the middle of the ocean.

24. Now it's time for Buffet to miss a lover who is away from him. He's not away from her. She has gone away for an entire four days, and he has a big sad about in Come Monday (no, not like that). 

25. Closing out the album is Buffet's controversial bisexual anthem about how the man that he also loved has also taken some time away. He Went To Paris is a tearful reminder about how in the 70s, what happened at sea, stayed at sea. Not really. Can you imagine? It's actually about the life of a Spanish Civil War veteran who ends up living his life traveling by sea. Bob Dylan said it's one of his favorite Jimmy Buffet songs. I get that. It is a smooth way to close out this album of songs whose lyrics are embedded forever in my brain.