Ever since its release in 1971, American Pie has been analysed, debated, raked over, pulled apart. Artists ranging from Madonna to Tyson Fury have covered Don McLean’s eight-and-a-half-minute odyssey. There are entire academic treatises on who the king, the queen, the joker and the rest of its characters are based on. The Recording Industry of America lists American Pie as the fifth best song of the 20th century. At 75, McLean is celebrating the song’s 50th anniversary with a UK tour in 2022. What, though, does it all mean?
“The day the music died” almost definitely refers to the 1959 plane crash that killed the pioneering rock’n’rollers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. Beyond that McLean has only confirmed that the song means
