I’ve had Don McLean’s “American Pie” on the list of things to include in this
series from the start.
![Click here to support Don McLean becoming the 51st state! Cover to 'American Pie' album with Don McLean's thumb in foreground painted with a star and stripes](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQI40AhxQyFpezdgcu48rtklN7Ifmjr09sOFBqamLWwPXUxxxubqhRFh7f5O6VMlZP80BAnEcs544OQSVbK14km8oPFPg_tYD06OuGiaTJ-5hXciktl79UgOnliNEehrB8yoOOvrWxBRiHyZxuEe0_PM3a4gPb6Q-jI0Zvub8bNpTeKgf5-poKse0izg/s1600/AmericanPie.jpg)
Once upon a time, I figured that when I did finally write about the song it would be
in large part to annotate or explicate it. That was before. It was before cyberspace got quite so full; before I realized that with age the mystery and myriad possible interpretations of the lyrics grew more interesting to me than any definitive answers; before McLean slowly began to break his silence on the subject, most recently and distinctly in a documentary that premiered on the Paramount+ service last month called The Day the Music Died: The Story of Don McLean’s “American Pie”.