Me & Magdalena
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| "Me & Magdalena" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by the Monkees | ||||
| from the album Good Times! | ||||
| Released | May 20, 2016 | |||
| Recorded | February–March 2016[1] | |||
| Genre | Folk | |||
| Length | 3:33 | |||
| Label | Rhino | |||
| Songwriter | Ben Gibbard | |||
| Producers | Adam Schlesinger, The Monkees, Jeff Barry | |||
| The Monkees singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Licensed audio | ||||
| "Me & Magdalena" on YouTube | ||||
"Me & Magdalena" is a song by the American rock band the Monkees, released as the third and final single from the band's 2016 album Good Times!.[2][3]
When asked about the track, songwriter Benjamin Gibbard said via an email to National Public Radio:
Before The Beatles, before The Velvet Underground and before punk and/or indie rock, The Monkees were the first band I truly loved. Their albums were always on in our home when I was a kid, especially Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., and I learned to sing alongside them. I spent countless hours in front of the TV in the ’80s watching Monkees reruns, wishing I could climb through the screen and be in the show with them. They made being in a band seem so fun—and goddammit, it should be! For these reasons and a million others, I can say with absolutely zero hyperbole that contributing ‘Me & Magdalena’ to this album has been the greatest honor of my career.
— Benjamin Gibbard, via email to NPR[4]
Composition and lyrics
"Me & Magdalena" was written for the band by Ben Gibbard, the lead vocalist and guitarist for the band Death Cab for Cutie.[4] The lyrics center around the singer's remembrance for a girl named Magdalena, who has seemingly passed away in the lyrics, as critic Jay McDowell wrote in an American Songwriter article: "I perceived it to be about a recently deceased woman and the song is being sung from the perspective of the surviving partner."[2]
