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The difference, in 1974, was a single that could be his flagship as Buffett set sail towards more profitable waters. “Come Monday,” written like most of Living and Dying In 3/4 Time by Buffett himself and produced by Don Gant, was released in April, as he continued a rigorous touring schedule that was taking him ever further around the States.

Buffett had just completed a residency at Nashville’s Exit/In, and was all set for a return to the Troubadour in Los Angeles, when the song began its persuasive seduction of AC, pop and (to a minor extent) country formats. Largely autobiographical, the lyric described the singer travelling to California “for the Labor Day Weekend show.” He did indeed open there for Country Joe McDonald, over three nights at the Lion’s Share club in San Anselmo, some 35 miles north over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.

His first marriage having already ended in divorce, Buffett had met Jane Slagsvol, a South Carolina native who had relocated to Key West, Florida, and quickly became the romantic focus of the writer’s new songs. They included “Come Monday,” in which the homesick narrator yearned to return to his new love and future wife after his live engagements, boldly confessing that “California has worn me quite thin.”

He completed the song in the budget hotel in which he was staying, “deathly depressed,” as he reflected on Late Night With David Letterman in 1983, when he described “Come Monday” as “the song that kept me from killing myself in the Howard Johnson in Marin County.” Soon after returning from the road, at Woodland Studios in Nashville on October 23, he recorded it.