When you were working on “American Pie,” were you ever concerned with how radio would react?

Q: There is certainly an art to writing such a long song. There are some things in there that I would say in a song, like, “We’re dancing around the kitchen in the refrigerator light.” I liked that. McLean: I hadn’t, but then I listened to it and the lyrics and I liked them.

She must have great parents, because she’s a very civilized young lady. So it was fun for me to experience a little of that with this story. She’s been hugely famous for a decade or more, and all of a sudden has exploded into the force-of-nature realm. McLean: She’s a beautiful person and has a beautiful heart and charisma and great talent. Like Taylor beating the 8 minutes and 27 seconds of “American Pie.” That has generated humongous publicity all over the world because of her incredible success and I’d like to say she has sort of cast a spell across the nation and evolved into a force of nature of some sort right in front of people’s eyes. What has been its biggest gift to you the past 50 years?ĭon McLean: It’s kind of become a folk song that everybody knows, which is what a folk song is, and it’s always throwing off stories. Q: “American Pie” is just such a transcendent song. 28, McLean will launch a world tour in Hawaii – his first extensive jaunt since 2019 – where he says he will perform a different show every night, “but I do sing the ones people want to hear.”Ĭalling from Palm Desert, California, where he spends most of his time, McLean, who has a children’s book coming next year (narrated, he said, by Peter Gallagher) and a Broadway musical in the works, talked about the endurance of what has practically become a national hymn and his admiration of Swift. In 2011, Drake’s “Doing it Wrong” shared elements of McLean’s “The Wrong Thing to Do” from his 1977 “Prime Time” record, and Tupac Shakur publicized his affection for McLean’s 1972 hit “Vincent,” telling the Los Angeles Times, “That’s how I want to make my songs feel.”

But then Swift sent McLean, 76, flowers and a note (“I will never forget that I'm standing on the shoulders of giants,” she wrote, in part), which he publicly praised, and “American Pie” was reinvigorated yet again.īut while the anthem is the trailblazer, other songs in McLean’s repertoire have dipped into pop culture. Guitar lessons: Don McLean offers tutorials online

Is american pie the longest song