The classic song that took Don McLean a decade to complete

It also alludes to various social and political events, including the civil rights movement, the counterculture movement of the ’60s, and the rebellion against capitalist political leadership, while capitalizing on our association with apple pie and traditional American values. All of this fits perfectly with the slower, more calculated pace of the first section, in which McLean references the tragic 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and JP Richardson.

Unlike today, Holly’s death shocked the world in a different way, especially because it was one of the first deaths in the music scene involving such a young person. McLean not only marks this event as a tragic end to music, but also uses it as a necessary backdrop for all that follows; the wistful tone and repeated refrain evoke a longing for a simpler, more hopeful time.

Although it probably took a while to put the song together, simply because of the multitude of references, McLean once said American songwriter that it took about ten years to write and complete because his longing for Holly’s music never waned. In his own words: “It took me ten years to write ‘American Pie’ and put the album together because during those ten years I had this longing, you could say, for Buddy Holly’s music and the sadness of his departure.”

The song was also hugely ambitious, more so than perhaps any other historically-themed song of the time, especially because it was so easy to get it wrong. But the idea of ​​wanting to write a ‘big song’ ended up being the natural glue that held everything together in the end.”

“We were in the midst of a huge crisis in the United States: drugs, the Vietnam War, civil rights, cities burning, dead people coming home from the Vietnam War every day,” McLean explained.

He added: “I wanted to write a big song about America, and when I combined the death of Buddy Holly with those ideas, the song became what it was, but I waited ten years for the moment to do this.”

The song was definitely worth the wait, as it remains one of the most culturally significant songs to this day and seems inextricably linked to the eras in which it dominated.

Related topics