If you find yourself around a campfire this summer There's a good chance that someone is gonna try to start a sing-along of Don McLean's American Pie Originally released in 1971 the song quickly became a cultural relic thanks to its combination of catchy hooks and enigmatic lyrics. Though McLean himself has been reluctant to come out with the songs meaning, it's been the subject of many discussions ever since its release. And many of these analyses have come to the same conclusion The song is about a crossroads in the history of American society, culture and perhaps most of all, music. Let's take a closer look The first verse of American Pie contains the clearest reference and one that serves to give us direction for the rest of the song The day the music died. On February 3rd, 1959, a plane went down near Clear Lake, Iowa. The passengers of that plane were rock-and-roll icons, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper At the time people called the incident the day the music died and many worried that it would be the death of rock and roll as a movement The song's narrator recalls this black day and breaks into the chorus, a lament for the innocence lost by that plane crash The chorus is a nostalgia for the time before Buddy Holly died, a nostalgia for America of the 1950s. It's laden with American symbols mentioning Chevrolet's and rye whiskey and of course the titular miss American Pie The symbol of miss American Pie is a callback to idyllic images of America in the 1950s with dreams and memories of fresh baked pies and pinup models These images plunge us into the second verse bathed in nostalgia for a more innocent time The narrator sings of faith in God and dancing to rock and roll at wholesome high school sarcas This verse features references to a pair of 1950's hit songs too. The Monotones' 'Book of Love' and Marty Robbins' 'A White Sport Coat and A Pink Carnation' and while this image may seem perfect on the surface tensions were boiling beneath. At this time many Americans were disenfranchised by institutional racism and sexism, while America is a country had a shifting role on the global stage Musically, people were becoming less conservative too. And rock-and-roll was far from dead We see that, as the next verse jumps us a decade ahead to 1969 Gone are the simple days of high school dances and the Bible, replaced with complex archetypal figures and power struggles that show the evolution of music over the next decade The figure that dominates this verse is The Jester who many take to represent Bob Dylan. On the cover of 1963 is The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Dylan wears a leather jacket reminiscent of James Dean and 'Rebel Without A Cause' But Dylan was to shift away from Dean, He was a rebel with a cause. As McLean puts it he sang with the voice of the people Singing protest songs for the youth and the disenfranchised. In doing so he became the face of American music stealing that crown from the king Elvis Presley This line features biblical allegory too. It's a crown of thorns, like the one Jesus wore, and it weighs heavy on Dylan The rest of the verse pans out the music scene building up to 1969 with John Lennon getting into left-wing politics and rock moving into darker more introspective territory From here we cut back to the nostalgic chorus before diving face-first into the disarray of the late 1960s 'Helter Skelter' is a reference to the Manson murders of 1969. In which Charles Manson believed the Beatles song contained hidden messages For some this was a dark end to a hippie movement that had seemed so promising and optimistic The rest of the fourth verse deals with that very movement looking at the way people were trying to push forward music and thought at this time The Jester is once again Dylan who got criticized for his electorate shift in 1965, and then got in a motorcycle crash a year later This nearly ended his life taking him out of the music scene for a time, on the sidelines in a cast Undeterred bands like The Beatles drove music forward with albums like Sgt pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band referenced clearly But the sergeant's aren't just a reference to The Beatles, the word also carries double meaning militaristic connotations. In the mid-60s America was knee-deep in the Vietnam War, which would last almost another decade And that war revealed a lot about America Changing the country's perception on the world stage and bringing out tensions on the home front. At the end of the verse McLean talks about how Buddy Holly's plane crash factored in. His death revealed the grime and disarray beneath the slick surface of 50s America The fifth verse brings us to the incident that inspired American Pie. The Altamont Speedway Free Festival Two years after the roaring success of Woodstock, another free concert was planned. An attempt to recapture that hippy magic Headlined by the Rolling Stones, the concert turned out to be a disaster. The massive crowd became drunken and disorderly As did The Hell's Angels who were hired for security. By the time The Stones took the stage at sundown, it was chaos and a man named Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death after pulling a revolver in the crowd The fifth verse captures all of this in beautifully symbolic language It references the Rolling Stone song 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' while playing up the biblical imagery that has driven the song One of the altercations during the show happened while The Stones were playing 'Sympathy for the Devil' something that McLean parallels with his lyrics about Satan The Altamont concert could be seen as a living representation of American culture. A chaotic dark end to a decade that kicked off with so much optimism The sixth verse of the song deals with the fallout of this, with a musical shift from an upbeat jam to a slow sad lament The girl who sang the blues could be Janis Joplin in a reference to the deaths of rock greats like Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix that signaled the end of the decade in an echo of the day the music die. The verse ends on a lasted biblical reference, which some have taken to reference the assassinations of Martin Luther King, John F Kennedy and Robert Kennedy However, the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost could also be Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper And this brings us to one final nostalgic chorus It may seem like a call for a return to the days of miss American Pie But I don't necessarily think that's the case The song acknowledges that the idyllic 50s were an illusion and that illusion came crashing down the day the music died. And while there was conflict in tension and many life's lost throughout the sixties, it was also a decade defined by change and progress. And of course some of the greatest music ever made It was a turning point for American culture that still has impacts today as we sit at another historical crux. And that's why American Pie is such a beloved song When you break out the guitar and try to sing it at that campfire You're tapping into a deep history of music, politics and social change. And you're joining yourself up as another thread in the great web of music history Hey everyone, thanks so much for watching If you want to help support my channel and you want to help protect your internet browsing, head over to nordvpn.com/polyphonic and enter the offer code polyphonic if you enter that code you'll be able to use Nord's seamless VPN system to protect your internet and secure your browsing for less than a few bucks a month And again, thank you so much for watching, subscribing, liking all of that good stuff. You guys are awesome
Hey man, I just watched this, I love your content. I’m curious, in general and in this particular project, what’s your research method typically like ...if there is one?
I watched this with my dad who lived through most of the stuff that was talked about in the video! He enjoyed it thoroughly so thank you!
Another entertaining, well researched, and interesting video, keep up the great work!!