decoding american pie

more than a song, more than a feeling

them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye, singing “this’ll be the day that i die.”

released in 1971 on Don McLean’s second album, american pie is an incredibly crafted and complex 8:42 minute ballad that cycles through the music, pop culture, and state of america in the 60s. it broke records for being the longest song to reach number one in the billboard charts at the time of its release, and held that record for almost half a century. it stayed at the top of the charts for over four weeks in 1972. the original handwritten lyrics sold for $1.2 mil usd. it’s clear that the song is as well know and iconic as it is commercially successful.

more information has been uncovered in recent times about the history behind the song. it was widely suspected that the song alluded to the 1959 plane crash that killed musical greats like Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, often known colloquially as ‘the day the music died’, which made sense considering the focal point of the phrase in the song. in an interview with the guardian in 2020, the artist behind the song, Don McLean, stated that there was more to the song than the accident.

when McLean was 15, he lost his father after having a premonition about his death mere days before. he blamed himself for years. according to him, the song is as much about the death of buddy holly, his musical idol growing up, as it was about losing his father. ‘the day the music died’ is ultimately about loss whichever way you put it, but about two very different people and what they mean to the writer.

some people have just about given their life to decoding and dissecting every line in the whole song. there are countless websites and hundreds of write-ups just like this out there. the artist himself has always been fairly light on giving information on the song, and many online are only aware of the surface level meaning. there was a documentary made by filmmaker Mark Moormann in 2022 about the ‘secrets behind the song and the impact on pop and musical culture’. despite gaining fairly good reviews, many fans and people who watched it felt that McLean was glossing over the truth and not exposing the actual meaning and motives behind the song. the aforementioned guardian article was one of the most detailed and revealing i could find (in terms of direct quotes and words from McLean himself - there were many in-depth fan pages). many lines in the song have two meanings - one a pop culture or music reference, and one a personal reference to what McLean has been through or what his life was/is like.

but why have years of music geeks and fans committed so heavily and spent so much time working out every line? what makes the song appealing enough to be dissected and examined for the last many years? McLean has been famously light on his explanations until very recently, leaving almost nine minutes of famed ambiguity. the sense of mystery surrounding the real, true meaning, mixed with its cultural impact make it a scrumptious and deep song to analyze. whether any theories or assumptions about the content of the song are true doesn’t really matter - it’s the act of searching.

he 1959 plane crash that killed many musical greats, some of which were McLean’s idols and inspirations, is a key point in the meaning behind the song. the following is a list of some examples of the references to this in the lyrics throughout the song:

‘But February made me shiver’ - the plane crash occurred on the 3rd of February

‘I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride’ - Buddy Holly, who was killed in the crash, had a wife who was pregnant at the time; she had a miscarriage shortly after the event

‘Them good ol’ boys were drinkin whiskey and rye singing “this’ll be the day that I die, this’ll be the day that I die.’ - one of Buddy Holly’s most well known songs was “That’ll be the Day”; the chorus contains the line “That’ll be the day that I die”

‘Now for ten years we’ve been on our own’ - McLean began writing the song roughly ten years after the crash (in the late 60s)

there’s also a bounty of additional musical and cultural context in the song. it cycles through most of the important people, musicians and events of the 1960s, whether directly or through extended metaphors, as well as how the music scene as a whole changed and how, through a number of events and factors, there was a feeling that America lost its innocence. as well as having personal and contextual meaning for McLean, the phrase “the day the music died” is also about how America stopped believing in itself and the music that held it all together. with a number of huge cultural events happening at the time - the America-Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, the assassination of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King Jr, and so on - America changed and turned into a very different place in and around the time of the 60s.

there seems to be an endless number of theories, and the genius and thought behind every line is astonishing. researching the meaning and history behind the song for this piece led me to many a reddit or quora page on how an overwhelming number of people are sick of ‘armies of music trivia nerds’ explaining the song’s meaning in depth (whoops). lots of people seem to be sick of the speculation, and the song is seen by many to be overplayed and overhyped, with one oh-so-insightful quora troll stating that the “mediocrity [of the song] is overshadowed by the fact that it’s way too long”. thank you, person. while these anonymous mediocrities may have a place and a point, i know for a fact, from both personal experience and research, that many more feel the opposite way.

i’ve recently had a american pie ‘phase’ where i have been repeating the song over and over multiple times a day. i’ve never not known the song and have always liked it to a degree, but it’s one of my favourite songs at the moment. i also had a small assignment in my english class where we had to analyze a song in preparation for our unfamiliar text test. it was fairly simple and rudimentary, but was still fun and naturally, i chose american pie. for such a layered and interesting song, it is weirdly devoid of similes, but i could go on about the metaphors for paragraphs and paragraphs. with this assignment, i actually did my work in english for once instead of staring into space while listening to music or writing my substack posts, such as this (a solid half of this piece has been written in my english class over the last month or so).

there’s also so much to explore with this song in terms of what it means to individual people rather than the meaning intended by McLean. this piece was originally supposed to be about the metaphors behind the song and what it stands for and the many layers and theories, but it quickly developed into something more. as i wrote, i discovered i wanted to write more into what it represents in peoples lives and what makes it memorable and good, rather than what made it famous. apparently i’m allergic to writing anything, no matter the topic, without putting a piece of myself in there.

american pie is a timeless work, but i think that a particular generation and era of people have the closest connection with it. for those born in the 50s and 60s, they were young when the song was released, and for much of their childhood and adolescence, the song was in popular discourse. a study a few years back found that the music that you listen to at the age of 17 is the music that you listen to for the rest of your life and what you will always love and fall back on, and for this generation, american pie was it. the song has a naturally nostalgic tone, which just makes it feel even more like the childhood and youth of a whole generation. everyone can have a sing along to the chorus, and even 54 years after its release, it hasn’t lost its spark or appeal. i believe american pie will continue to appeal to new audiences and generations, if nothing more for than a catchy tune and a look back at what life was like then.

so maybe, the magic is in the mystery a way in the case of american pie - its cultural impact and its undoubted timelessness, as well as the fact it is simply a great song, outweighs the need for analysis, though some will always try. the magic is how the music makes us think, feel and remember. the magic is the fact that the music didn't die, and 54 years on, everyone still knows the chorus.

the amount of information i could find on the song online was limited as my internet apparently seems to be allergic to any websites on it, but here are some sources i found and could access on it that were super interesting if anyone wants to read further:

• https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/oct/22/don-mclean-american-pie-its-meaning-family-deaths-tragedy-60s

• https://www.pleacher.com/forwards/facts/amerpie.pdf

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamwindsor/2022/07/19/don-mclean-tells-the-story-of-american-pie--explains-the-lyrics-in-new-documentary/