How one tiny lyric change made the ‘Piña Colada Song’ one of the biggest hits of the ’70s

There are a billion different decisions that go into making a hit song. A songwriter has to settle on a tempo, key, chord changes, and lyrics. The band has to manage the small interactions between the instruments that give the song its energy, swing, and dynamics. One false move could throw an otherwise catchy tune into something that fails to move anyone. Given the number of correct decisions a songwriter or producer has to make for a song to work, it’s a wonder that most aren’t too paralyzed to write a note. Singer-songwriter Rupert Holmes had a massive hit in 1979 with “Escape (The Piña Colada Song),” which was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks. It’s maintained its popularity over the decades, having been featured in countless films and TV shows, including Guardians of the Galaxy, Shrek, and Better Call Saul. The song is best known for its joyous and silly hook, “If you like Piña coladaaaaaaaas and getting caught in the rain,” and its incredible twist where the protagonist, who responds to a singles ad, realizes that he had been talking to his “old lady” the whole time. However, it’s hard to imagine that the song would have been a hit if Holmes hadn’t changed the original line of the hook minutes before recording the vocal. Initially, the lyric was “If you like Humphrey Bogart and getting caught in the rain.” Listen to the lyric in your head, and it just doesn’t quite hit the same way. Further, staying at home and watching The Big Sleep doesn’t feel as great an escape from a boring relationship as sipping on a rum and cream of coconut on an island in the sun. “Just before I sang, I thought to myself, you know, I’ve done a lot of songs with movie references. Maybe I don’t want to reference Humphrey Bogart again,” Holmes told Classic Bands. “It would be a bit of a cliché. I thought, OK, the guy’s looking for an escape, looking for an adventure. What are the escape drinks when you go on vacation? I ran down the names of drinks. Piña colada came to mind. I had never had a piña colada in my life. I didn’t even know what was in one. But it seemed to fit if I flipped out another beat’s note. It seemed to sit alright.” ‘The Piña Colada Song’was the result of another song’s failure “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” appears to be even more of an unlikely hit after learning that it was originally part of a botched song called “People Need Other People” that was so complex it required two drummers. After one take, a drummer fell unconscious due to overindulging in an unidentified substance, so the song was scrapped. But Holmes saw hope in a 16-bar snippet where the band was locked in. “I found there were 16 bars of music on that first take that were very tight; everybody was in a very nice groove on it. So we duplicated those 16 bars onto another multitrack master over and over again and edited them all together. I think there were 60 edits to make up a reel that was 5 minutes long of this 16-bar vamp,” Holmes told Song Facts. The night before the session, Holmes wrote an entire song around the loop, save for the pièce de résistance, the “piña colada” lyric he added last minute. Piña coladas and coconuts. Credit: Canva Taking a 16-bar snippet of music, looping it repeatedly, and using it for an entire song was a rare move back in 1979. But these days, it’s a common practice in hip-hop and among pop artists such as Ed Sheeran (“Shape of You”), Gotye (“Somebody That I Used to Know”), and Lorde (“Royals”). Holmes’s rough journey to creating the biggest hit of his career shows that incredible success can sometimes be the result of what appears, at first, to be failure. It also shows that, sometimes, one small change can take a good idea and make it unforgettable.