Donna Summer’s ‘MacArthur Park’ Tops Dance Chart With Alysa Liu’s Help

Donna Summer’s ‘MacArthur Park’ Tops Dance Chart With Alysa Liu’s Help

Donna Summer’s 1978 classic “MacArthur Park” is the No. 1 top-selling dance song of the week, as the track re-enters Billboard’s Dance Digital Song Sales chart following a 575% surge in weekly sales.

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The song sold 2,000 downloads in the United States in the Feb. 20-26 tracking week, according to Luminate. The spike can be traced to figure skater Alysa Liu, who performed to an edited version of the song Feb. 19 during her free skate at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, earning the U.S. its first gold medal in the event since 2002.

“MacArthur Park” spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978 and has continued to top Billboard charts in the decades since. In 2013, a Laidback Luke remix, “MacArthur Park (2013)” (billed solely to Summer), scored a week at No. 1 on the now-inactive Dance Club Songs chart, marking Summer first posthumous No. 1 following her death in 2012.

Jimmy Webb wrote the song, which was originally a No. 2 Hot 100 hit in 1968 for Richard Harris (later known as Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films). Other versions have also charted by Tony Bennett, the Four Tops and Waylon Jennings, while “Weird Al” Yankovic turned it into “Jurassic Park” in 1993, following the release of the blockbuster of the same name.

This week’s rise on Dance Digital Song Sales marks Summer’s fourth posthumous No. 1. Two others came from remixes of her 1979 disco classic “Hot Stuff.” In 2018, Ralph Rosario and Erick Ibiza’s remix, “Hot Stuff 2018,” spent a week at No. 1 on Dance Club Songs, while in 2020 a remix with Kygo logged a week at No. 1 on Dance Digital Song Sales.

Summer boasts a legendary history on Billboard’s charts. She charted 32 songs on the Hot 100 in 1975-99, including four No. 1s among 14 top 10s. In 1979, she became the first woman to earn three No. 1 hits in a single calendar year: “Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girls” and the Barbra Streisand team-up “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough).” Before her, only Elvis Presley (1960), the Beatles (1964, 1965, 1967), the Supremes (1964, 1965), the Jacksons (1970), Elton John (1975) and Bee Gees (1978, 1979) had achieved the feat. In the years since, the only women to triple up at No. 1 in a calendar year are Paula Abdul (1989), Mariah Carey (1991), Rihanna (2008, 2010), Katy Perry (2010, 2011), Ariana Grande (2020) and Taylor Swift (2023).

Summer has also charted 22 albums on the Billboard 200, including the No. 1s Live and More (1978), Bad Girls (1979) and On the Radio: Greatest Hits: Volumes I & II (1980).


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