R.I.P. Jimmy Buffett, "Margaritaville" legend

Jimmy Buffett has died. One of the most successful musicians of his generation, Buffett was also a restaurateur, businessman, and a best-selling author, leveraging his distinctively laid-back brand, alongside his not inconsiderable talents, to become an icon known planet-wide. His musical style—sometimes referred to punnily as “Gulf and Western” or “trop rock”—was a laid-back blend of folk, country, rock, and Caribbean sounds, infused with healthy doses of humor. Buffett’s death, reportedly from cancer, was announced on his social media accounts late on Friday night. He was 76.

Born in Mississippi in the mid-’40s, Buffett got his start in the world of country music, operating out of Nashville and New Orleans. Time spent in the Florida Keys and Caribbean islands like St. Barts altered his outlook, and his musical output, considerably, though; by the time he released his second album, 1973's A White Sport Coat And A Pink Crustacean, Buffett had already settled into the early stages of the style that would define his musical output for the next 50 years—and which would be underlined a few years later with the release of 1977's Changes In Latitude, Changes In Attitude.

Changes was the transition point for Buffett, from “cult favorite” to “mainstream hit,” helped along considerably by the massive success of the album’s most beloved single, “Margaritaville.” The song contains much of what is most engaging about Buffett’s work: A breezy musical style with an irresistible hook; a subtle melancholy tone; and especially a vein of self-effacing humor that makes its beach bum narrator deeply relatable, even to those living thousands of miles from the beach. And even though Buffett occasionally made a few gentle jokes about the track’s utter domination of his career—his best-selling greatest hits album, Songs You Know By Heart, carries the tongue-in-cheek subtitle Jimmy Buffett’s Greatest Hit(s)—he clearly didn’t shy away from its popularity: he would eventually lend the “Margaritaville” name to restaurants, a casino, his record label, a craft beer, his real estate company, and more.

In the 1980s, Buffett also embraced another highly successful element of his musical career: His reputation as a consistent, and tireless, concert draw. Although he had 45 different named tours between 1976 and 2023, the truth is that Buffett pretty much never stopped playing live, continuing through injuries, plane crashes, occasional brushes with the law, and more. (Not surprisingly, he released a dozen live albums across his career, including several unedited “sound board albums” meant to carry the energy of bootleg concert recordings.) Never afraid to give his audience—who started calling themselves “Parrotheads” in the late ’80s, and sometimes adopted an almost religious flavor to their fandom—what they want, Buffett was well known for including “The Big 8" (“Margaritaville,” “Come Monday,” “Fins,” “Volcano,” “A Pirate Looks A Forty,” “Cheeseburger In Paradise,” “Why Don’t We Get Drunk,” and “Changes In Latitude, Changes In Attitude”) in almost every set list for 40 years.

Meanwhile, Buffett was also expanding his creative and entrepreneurial output: He released his first book, the short story collection Tales From Margaritaville, in 1989, following it up with novels and a bestselling memoir, A Pirate Looks At Fifty. He also founded his first Margaritaville Cafe in 1985; there are now 23 Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritavilles around the world. (His Cheeseburger In Paradise franchise fared less well; the chain closed in 2014, after Buffett sold off his stake in it.) Long-time friends with mega-investor Warren Buffett (no relation), Buffett had a clear knack for business—and a keen understanding of the ways his brand could be leveraged.

But it’s also clear that, for all the licensed properties and branded cafes, Buffett’s first priority was the music: He continued to tour and release albums well into the last years of his life, ultimately releasing more than two dozen studio albums across that time. (His last full release was in 2020, titled, with typical humor, Songs You Don’t Know By Heart.) He was also prolific in film, television, and theater, contributing songs to films like Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Urban Cowboy, and FernGully: The Last Rainforest. (He even acted from time to time; in case you were wondering, yes, that is Buffett carefully keeping a margarita safe in each hand while running from dinosaurs in 2015's Jurassic World. And he had a notable cameo as himself in Harmony Korine’s 2019 feature The Beach Bum, which takes significant inspiration from Buffett’s work.)

In the end, few people on the planet have ever given the impression of being more comfortable with who they were, and what they did, than Jimmy Buffett. Yes, he put his name on lots of things; yes, he knew how to work a brand. But he also devoted huge portions of his life to the basic act of giving other people an extremely good time, performing tirelessly for crowds who loved him, for multiple decades straight. And it’s worth noting that pretty much anyone who has tried to work in the styles he pioneered in the ’70s and ’80s, fusing his folk and country roots with the sounds of the islands he loved, ends up coming off as little more than a mere “Jimmy Buffett imitator”; his musical skills, his twangy but powerful voice, and his deft hand at writing funny, personal lyrics were pretty much unmatched.

The social media posts announcing his death noted that he “passed away peacefully on Sep. 1 surrounded by his family, his friends, music, and dogs. He lived his life like a song until the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by many.”