Don McLean Spills Secrets on His Iconic Hit 'American Pie' Ahead of Its 50-Year Anniversary (Exclusive)
etonline.comDon McLean is opening up about the meaning behind the lyrics to the iconic anthem he wrote at 24 in 1971 that has more than endured, it's transcended generations.Ahead of the release of the new Paramount+ documentary, McLean sat down with ET's Matt Cohen and offered insight into the legendary singer's thinking when he penned, widely considered a masterpiece for aptly defining an era brimming with tragedy, from the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to the Vietnam War.In fact, the track is so iconic, it came in at No. 5 in the Songs of the Century list compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The song's success, though, came as a huge surprise to the man himself.«Well, first of all, I was having a lot of fun writing this,» McLean tells ET. «I never thought anybody would hear it, let alone would become what it became.»The new 90-minute documentary on Paramount+ (out Tuesday) takes fans on a line-by-line journey and the meaning behind the lyrics to his 8-minute, 37-second track.
When he originally put the idea down on paper, McLean says he somewhat fancied himself as a painter.«There are specific things that I was talking about in the song and then there's stuff that I just threw in, that I made up and put in there,» McLean admits. «But the idea was that it would be like an impressionistic painting, OK?»But some lyrics are not up for interpretation.
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