It turns out there’s quite a story behind Madonna’s subversive cover of this iconic American pop song

July 4, 2024

Since its release in 1971, Don McLean’s epic, eight-and-a-half-minute song “American Pie” has become a permanent part of American culture, selling millions of copies, being covered by several different artists, and even being the subject of a 2022 Paramount+ documentary called The Day the Music Died: The Story of Don McLean’s “American Pie”(It also held the record as the longest song to reach No. 1 for nearly 50 years before Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” broke the record in 2021.)

In 2000, the Queen of Pop, Madonna, recorded her own version of the song to promote the soundtrack to her film. The next best thingstarring Rupert Everett.

The film is about single yoga teacher Abbie (Madonna) who decides to raise a child with her gay best friend Robert (Everett). When their friendship falls apart, a bitter custody battle ensues. And in the end, no one is happy.

Although it opened at number 2 in the box office charts, The next best thing was panned by critics and ultimately failed to recoup its $25 million budget. Everett later said the film was responsible for both his acting career and his friendship with Madonna, with whom he was close before filming.

“We won’t see each other anymore,” he said The Telegraph’s Stellar Magazine in 2020, adding that she is “an amazing person and that part of my life was incredibly exciting. To make a film with her, to be friends with her and to have been such a fan of hers. But the aftermath of the film’s failure was gigantic for me, like an explosion in space.”

Perhaps the only positive thing about this ill-fated project was the soundtrack, which Madonna executive produced. She personally selected all 12 songs and contributed two of her own: an original ballad called “Time Stood Still” and an electronic version of McLean’s 1971 hit, which Everett reportedly persuaded her to record.

Co-produced by Madonna and William Orbit, the cover is an abridged version of McLean’s original track and features background vocals from Everett, who also appears in the music video.

When promoting the single, Madonna said: “For me, this is a real millennium song. We’re going through a big shift in the way we see pop culture right now, because of the internet. In some ways, it’s like we’re saying goodbye to music as we knew it. And to pop culture as we knew it.”

The music video was directed by Philipp Stölzl and features a number of ordinary Americans, including queer people and couples. At one point, two women kiss. But because it was the year 2000, when both DOMA and DADT were still in force and almost half of the US states still had laws criminalizing gay sex, MTV refused to broadcast the video.

So a second version was cut, featuring a dance remix of the song and omitting the sapphic moment. It was a rare moment in Madonna’s boundary-pushing career that she gave in to censorship.

Somehow.

Three years later, she belatedly gave the MTV executives who had censored her the middle finger by locking lips with Britney Spears at the 2003 MTV VMAs—a pop culture moment that has since become almost as iconic as McLean’s original song.

After its release, “American Pie” reached number 1 in several countries. (Oddly enough, the single was not released in the United States, but still reached number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100.) It was also included as a bonus track on the international edition of her eighth studio album Music.

Although “American Pie” was a worldwide hit, selling over a million copies, it was not included on Madonna’s 2001 greatest hits compilation album. GHV2At the time, she said she regretted including the song as a bonus track on Musicso she “punished” it.

“A certain record company executive talked me into it, but it didn’t belong on the album, so now it’s being punished,” she told the BBC in an interview. “My gut told me not to do it, but I did it and then I regretted it, and that’s exactly why it doesn’t deserve a place on the album.” GHV2.”

The song was also not included on their 2009 greatest hits compilation album. Celebration, although the music video was included on the DVD Celebration: The Video Collection.

By 2022, however, Madonna seemed to have warmed up to it… At least enough to record a remix version that appeared on her Finally enough love 50 number one album, although she did not perform it on her recent Celebration Tour.

When asked what he thought of the Queen of Pop’s cover of his signature song, McLean told UK Music Reviews in 2021: “Well, you really couldn’t ask for a better gift anywhere in the world than for Madonna to do what she did with this song.”

He continued: “She released it in two different ways; she had it played three times in the film she made. To me, it was just a tremendous gift from this gigantic star.”