American Pie

The song ”American Pie” is mainly about the death of the American musician Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash on February 3, 1959. Several lines in the song reference to Buddy Holly. Like in the chorus, when it says “Singin' this'll be the day that I die”, which is a lyric in Buddy Holly’s song “That’ll be the Day”. Later in the chorus Mclean sings “the day music died”, which was what February 3, the day Buddy Holly died, later became known as.

The songs theme could be interpreted as being Don McLean’s relationship with music. It starts out with a description of rock’ n’ roll’s early stages with musicians like Buddy Holly. After he died Don McLean starts to describe music differently, with less innocence. He seems to have lost faith in it and in his own abilities, on the basis of the lines “And I knew if I had my chance” and “But I knew I was out of luck/ the day the music died”. The 2 first verses seems to be more about his personal relationship with music, while than the last 3 verses gives a description of the 1960’s music scene.

The song makes a lot of references to musicians and bands of the 1960’s. Like “And moss grows fat on a rolling stone”, here he could be referring to Bob Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone”. Which becomes more plausible in the next lines: “When the jester sang for the king and queen/ In a coat he borrowed from James Dean”. The Jester was Bob Dylan’s nickname. Bob Dylan was known for being a big fan of the actor James Dean and for being heavily influenced to his clothing style. With The King, Don McLean could be meaning Elvis Presley, which would make sense with the next lyrics: “While the king was looking down/ The jester stole his thorny crown”. Bob Dylan’s popularity rose during the 1960’s to a level equal or higher than Elvis’s popularity, therefore stole his crown.

In the line “while Lennon/Lenin? read a book on Marx”, it is