“American Pie” singer Don McLean reveals why he never felt “poor”

Don McLean never felt “poor” – even when he was broke.
The 78-year-old singer now has a net worth of $50 million, but explained that even during the difficult times while building his career, he still had the drive to keep going, stressing that people these days shouldn’t put so much emphasis on how much money they might have.
He told Fox News Digital: “I’ve been broke, but I’ve never been poor. I think people are poorer today because they have more money than they did when they were broke, because they don’t understand how great they are and how much they have, and they’ve given up and are only thinking about the money. So you can have money and still not feel like you can make it anywhere.
“I’ve always had that feeling. Nobody ever told me – I was always better than the others, okay? Nothing held me back. That’s America.”
Perhaps best known for his eight-and-a-half-minute ballad “American Pie” – which was inspired by rock’n’roll icon Buddy Holly’s tragic plane crash in 1959 – the “Vincent” singer noted that every songwriter has to experience a certain amount of “pain” in their life before they can realistically pick up a pen and produce a hit.
He said: “It’s very painful, you know, if you want to be a songwriter. If you’re not suffering, you’re not good enough as a songwriter. You know, if everything’s going perfectly for you, you have nothing to say, you know? And you certainly can’t empathize with the average person out there who has all kinds of bad things in their life, you know, dealing with drug-addicted kids and ex-wives and no money, and so on and so forth.”