Seven years is a long time to disappear when your songs are basically infrastructure. Beaches, parking lots, tailgates, bad days that need softening — Jimmy Buffett has been underwriting all of it for decades. So when Life on the Flip Side finally showed up, it didn’t feel like a comeback. It felt like a guy wandering back into the room with a grin, a story, and a cooler full of songs that already knew where they belonged.
“I have a lot of help,” Jimmy Buffett said, brushing off the idea of solo heroics. “It was kind of a labor of love. We hadn’t done anything in like seven years. Not that we weren’t busy — we were. Between the transitions of how music was being sent out, and working on the musical, it just took more time than I thought.”
That musical swallowed five years, start to finish, Broadway to the road. The Coral Reefer Band never stopped playing, though, and eventually the math got simple. “We wanted to do an album to go out on tour with,” he said. “So we went back to Key West and did it where it all started. Same little studio. January. Got it all ready to go… just in time for the pandemic.”
The timing was brutal. The resonance wasn’t. Buffett knows exactly how his songs get used. “A lot of people consider our music something that helps them get through tough times, as well as having fun,” he said. “These are pretty tough times. Little did we know it would wind up being heard by a lot more people.”
It debuted at No. 2, blocked only by Lady Gaga — a fact Buffett seemed to enjoy more than resent. “I like Lady Gaga,” he said. “I’ve always admired people who really have performance chops. It’s nice to be 73 and coming in second to her. That’s not a bad consolation prize.”
What makes Life on the Flip Side work isn’t nostalgia. It’s balance. The record dances right up to big ideas, then sidesteps with a joke before the sermon lands. Buffett knows exactly what he’s doing. “That was totally conscious,” he said, singling out “Slack Tide” as his favorite on the album. “I’m a great admirer of Bob Marley. He was talking about social injustice, but it’s ‘One Love.’ The message is in the verses, the fun is in the choruses.”
He laughed, then turned philosophical. “As a fisherman and someone in love with the ocean, even sharks and red snappers swim around together at slack tide. Maybe us creatures descended from amphibians should try that a little more.”
That instinct carries into “15 Cuban Minutes,” a song born from geography, family history, and a friend’s elastic sense of time. “There’s always a birthday but never any cake,” Buffett said, citing one of the metaphors that stuck. “You have to laugh a little at the absurdity of serious things.”
The phrase itself came from a friend running late. “I said, ‘What’s 15 Cuban minutes?’ He said, ‘It’s an hour. It’s a day.’” Buffett had been to Havana, stood on the Malecón, watched people dance it off because there wasn’t much else to do. “They use their music to get through it,” he said. “Growing up on the Gulf Coast, Mardi Gras was the same thing.”
Politics hover, but Buffett never plants a flag. “I don’t mean it to be a protest song,” he said. “Music has always been part of social change. Going back to Dylan. Each decade has something we needed to change.”
Environmental themes surface the same way — calmly, practically. “There are economic advantages to being environmentally responsible,” he said. “Clean energy is vital to survival. That’s just common sense.”
The album’s opening surprise comes courtesy of Paul Brady, whose “The World Is What You Make It” stopped Buffett cold. “Such a simple statement without beating people over the head,” he said. The connection turned personal fast. “We met and it felt like we’d known each other 40 years.”
Brady even sent a song Buffett finished and promptly adopted. “I said, ‘I was lucky enough to write a really good bar song, and this one’s right there with it.’ We’re opening the tour with a brand new song. That’s how much I think of his songwriting.”
Buffett is pragmatic about classics. “There’s about 10,” he shrugged. “A few rotators. You’ve got to swim around in that pool.” He’s also unapologetic. “I don’t get tired of doing ‘Margaritaville.’ It pays the rent. People are paying direct money to be entertained. I’m there to do their version of me.”
That philosophy feeds “Mailbox Money,” a wink to the songwriter dream. “I wanted to be a mailbox money guy,” he said. “Then I realized I’m really a performer.” The song spirals into Gulf Coast absurdity — a mailboat, a retired mailman, a man delivering his own royalties. “I can’t wait to play that song,” Buffett said. “That’s pure joy.”
For now, the stage is virtual. Buffett has been playing for first responders, curating decades of live footage, pulling audiences of 50,000 a night. “I’ll give the same show to two people as I will 20,000,” he said. “I’ve played to nobody before. You play for the bartenders and waitresses. That little bit of human feedback translates.”
Eventually, the band will be back. “It’s going to be a hell of a first show,” Buffett promised. Until then, the fans will tailgate in their backyards, the songs will keep doing what they do, and slack tide will show up when it’s ready — just long enough to remember how to swim together.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the tracks below.
