“Well, the pop music from the 30s, 40s and 50s isn’t simple music, but I understand it! And I understand Don’t Be Cruel and Since I Don’t Have You, and I understand folk music very well. Those are the three things that I understand. One of the things I do as a songwriter is fuse together old-fashioned popular music, rock ‘n’ roll from the 50s, and folk music. I was just doing something that interested me. They would happen once in a while, because the songs were on the radio and people apparently liked them, but I didn’t try for that. “Whether or not it would be a hit, who knew? I wasn’t even trying for a hit – I’ve never tried for hits. A song that every other song I played live would lead up to at the end – and I did that bit well, because that’s the way it’s panned out ever since! I wanted a song that was more about a modern America, a big song. That’s what I was attempting to do, but I didn’t want to write a simple, Woody Guthrie-type song like This Land Is Your Land or Jackhammer John… all those great songs he wrote, that had that simple power of the 1930s. Misc: ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic’s The Saga Begins is a Star Wars-themed parody of American Pie“The song was started as a big song about America. The song has also been covered by many different artists, notably by Madonna in 2000. While the song is ostensibly a reflection on the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper, scholars have debated the deeper meanings hidden within its lyric – a subject on which McLean himself has traditionally remained tight-lipped – for decades.
He’s maintained a successful career in music ever since, but it’s without doubt American Pie for which he’s best known. McLean wouldn’t have to wait too long to become a UK chart-topper, though – follow-up single Vincent, also from the American Pie album, saw him clenching the top spot a mere five months later, a trick he would repeat in 1980 with Crying. All the same, in 1971 it made an unlikely pop star of a then 26-year-old folk and rock ‘n’ roll artist from New York state called Don McLean, topping the charts in the US and all over Europe, though it went only to No 2 here in the UK. Weighing in at over eight-and-a-half minutes long and sporting no fewer than six densely worded, imagery-laden verses, American Pie is by no means your average pop song. The singer-songwriter aimed to craft “a big song” about “a modern America” and ended up delivering an eight-and-a-half-minute folk-rock phenomenon
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