Versions of American Pie have been sung tens of thousands of times by performers in the past 64 years. More than 1,500 people a week die from opioid-related overdoses while millions more are suffering with opioid addiction.Īmerican overdose deaths have been rising since the 1990s with tracking agencies reporting more than one million drug deaths since 2000. 1 now total 60 – nearly two a day.Īnd, of course, the lyrics “ A generation lost in space” are easily related to today’s American drug crisis. Total gun deaths since New Year’s Day are approaching 4,500.
Already this year American gun violence has killed 169 children ages zero to 17 and wounded 400. They have reason to scream in the streets today. Or, how about the lyrics in one of the song’s last stanzas – And in the streets, the children screamed. interference in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Substitute Joe Biden for Jack Kennedy and Cuba’s Fidel Castro with Russia’s Vlad Putin and his threats or nuclear war over U.S. President John Kennedy facing the threat of nuclear war during the 1960 Cuban missile crisis. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack Flash sat on a candlestick refers to U.S.
The song’s lyrics can be applied to other dangers facing today’s world. It’s easy to relate those lyrics to a dry levee today when we see global warming turning the Colorado River system, which provides water to 40 million people, into a trickle. When he wrote those words McLean is said to have been referring to The Levy, a hometown bar where he went to get a drink but missed last call. Although written more than 50 years ago, they can be applied to today’s United States, a country staggering under the weight of gun violence, international tensions and destructive climate change. It is a masterpiece lamenting the loss of innocence and idyllic life to a darkening mood changing America. Its nostalgic, ambiguous lyrics tell not just of the plane crash as the death of early rock and roll, but American society nosediving toward its own crash. 3, 1959.Īmerican Pie (‘American as apple pie’) has been described as one of the most successful and debated songs of the 20 th century. Richardson Jr.) who died in a plane crash on Feb. McLean wrote American Pie as a tribute to rock and roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper (J. For him, February is the month in which “the music died.” It isn’t February cold that makes McLean shiver. It’s February, and as the singer-songwriter Don McLean wrote in his 1971 smash hit American Pie: February makes you shiver.
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