American Pie (song)

"American Pie"
Picture sleeve for U.S. vinyl single. Artwork is also used as the front cover for the album of the same name and many other international releases of the single.
Single by Don McLean
from the album American Pie
B-side	"Empty Chairs" (promo) "American Pie part 2" (first release)
Released	November 1971 (original) November 1991 (re-release)
Format	Vinyl record (original) CD, cassette, vinyl (reissue)
Recorded	May 26, 1971
Genre	Folk rock
Length	8:33 (LP) 4:11 (Single Part 1) 4:31 (Single Part 2)
Label	United Artists
Writer(s)	Don McLean
Producer(s)	Ed Freeman for The Rainbow Collection, Ltd.
Don McLean singles chronology
"Castles in the Air" (1971) "American Pie" (1971) "Vincent" (1972)
Music sample "American Pie"

"American Pie"
Single by Madonna
from the album The Next Best Thing
Released	March 3, 2000
Format	CD single
Recorded	September 1999 (New York City, New York)
Genre	Dance-pop
Length	4:33
Label	Maverick Warner Bros.
Writer(s)	Don McLean
Producer(s)	Madonna William Orbit
Madonna singles chronology
"Beautiful Stranger" (1999) "American Pie" (2000) "Music" (2000)

"American Pie" is a song by American folk rock singer and songwriter Don McLean. Recorded and released on the American Pie album in 1971, the single was a number-one US hit for four weeks in 1972. In the UK, the single reached No. 2 on its original 1972 release and a reissue in 1991 reached No. 12. The song was listed as the No. 5 song on the RIAA project Songs of the Century. The song was covered by Madonna in 2000 and reached No. 1 in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

The repeatedly mentioned "day the music died" refers to the 1959 plane crash which killed early rock and roll performers Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. (The crash was not known by that name until after McLean's song became a hit.) The meaning of the other lyrics has long been debated, and for decades, McLean declined to explain the symbolism behind the many characters and events mentioned. However, the overall theme of the song is the loss of innocence of the early rock and roll generation as symbolized by the plane crash which claimed the lives of three of its heroes.

Don McLean began writing the song in upstate Saratoga Springs at Caffe Lena, according to local lore. He continued to write in Cold Spring, New York and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The song made its debut in Philadelphia at Saint Joseph's University when he opened for Laura Nyro on March 14, 1971.

Except to acknowledge that he first learned about Buddy Holly's death on February 3, 1959—McLean was age 13—when he was folding newspapers for his paper route on the morning of February 4, 1959 (the line "February made me shiver/with every paper I'd deliver"), McLean has generally avoided responding to direct questions about the song lyrics; he has said: "They're beyond analysis. They're poetry." He also stated in an editorial published in 2009, on the 50th anniversary of the crash that killed Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, that writing the first verse of the song exorcised his long-running grief over Holly's death and that he considers the song to be "a big song (…) that summed up the world known as America". McLean dedicated the American Pie album to Holly.