The literal meaning of the song is "American Pie" by Don McLean is about a tragedy. The song was inspired by rock and roll musicians named Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson who were all killed in a plane crash back in 1951. The event was known as "The Day the Music…
In the first part of the song he’s just singing that they say stay in your lane boy, and they think this thing is a highway. These lyrics mean that the music industry is telling him that he needs to stay in his lane and do what they say, but that this is a fast paced world and he can do whatever he wants. In the second part of the song they say “We’d have a tempo change every other time change cause our minds change on what we think is good.” This part of the song is talking about how if he was able to write and make the music exactly like he wants it that he would change it up and do it the way he likes because the music industry and their thoughts on what they think is good usually changes all the time. Whats in one day is out the next.…
This and the use of incorrect grammer, so common to rebellious teenagers, helps portray the message of the song, which is that today’s youth are prisoners of the older generations society, which alienate the younger generation and instead of looking for support and comfort, they thrive to rebel against these rules and law enforcement bodies, with the institution of society having no effect on the younger generation as they don’t comply and don’t want to reform. This creates the younger generations culture, arguing they are their own society.…
Some of the main messages hidden in the song use the lyrics “Frankie kicked a mine that day, the man kicked the moon”. these messages where for the people sitting at home, that the government was trying to cover up the war by diverting their attention on the moon landing to cover up the disgrace and horror of the war, they didn’t want the public of America sitting at home to know about what is really going on in the world. Also, for the soldiers in Vietnam the moon landing is just another memory for horror.…
The scene takes place by the docks, while Joe has flashbacks of all the tiresome work he has to do. As Joe is singing, his facial expressions show extreme fatigue. The lyrics, “Tired of livin’ but scared of dying” from the song, “O’l Man River’s”, are applicable to all the colored workers who eventually join Joe and sing shoulder to shoulder on how tired they are of working and not having a bit freedom. The song remains steady and mentions the Mississippi River and its strong waters as a way of representing the difference between societal differences. The song is a brief representation of slavery and the struggles and injustice that has to be faced by the colored race. A little change in a human and they are to be ashamed, being of mixed race counts as being colored and are to be forbidden from all white…
The song is about man who famous for playing the trumpet out in Chicago. His number came up and he was drafted into the army. He was now using his trumpet to blow reveille. He was down because he couldn't jam, his captain understood and went out and got him a band. Now he keeps everyone jumping to his music. The song showed anyone could be drafted.…
Don McLean recorded his first album Tapestry in 1969. The album wasn’t a great success but his first major break came with his second album which was American Pie. The two singles from this album, as mentioned above, rose up to number one on the charts. His song “American Pie” was partly inspired by the tragic deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson known as The Big Bopper who all died in a plane crash on February 3, 1959. This song made the expression “the day the music died” popular. In 2001 “American Pie” was voted number five in a poll of the 365 Songs of the Century.…
The first verse appears to show the appeal of the west to struggling families living in eastern states and goes on to explain, “the land was free and the price was right.” At the end of the next verse, Natalie Merchant uses the first-person perspective for the only time in the song, stating, “I see Indians that crawl through this mural that recalls our history.” This seems to further express…
In the first stanza, the speaker describes his drunken father by “the whiskey on your breath/ Could make a small boy dizzy.” They start dancing when the father gets back home from work. Even though the boy can’t follow his father beat, he still “hung on like death” and won’t let go of his father hands. We can see that the boy is having a very good relationship with his father, and he still feel happy when he’s dancing with his father who has a really strong whiskey breath, and always make the boy feel dizzy.…
In that last stanza she says what she is going to do in the future and she uses a lot of…
The rest of this stanza relates to the depressing feeling of the day. The next stanza goes on to say “My life is cold, and dark, and dreary” (6). A person’s life is now being compared to the day. This person remembers the past and has lost hope for the future. Their life is dark and dreary. Finally, this person’s sadness is addressed and is told “Behind the clouds is the sun still shining, Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall” (12-14). These three lines in the final stanza means people will have days where nothing will go well for them, but happier days with better outcomes will eventually…
The voices arrived without warning on an October night in 1962, when I was fourteen years old. Kill yourself....Set yourself afire. I stirred, thinking I was having a nightmare, but I wasn’t asleep; and the voices–low and insistent, taunting and ridiculing–continued to speak to me from the radio. Hang yourself. The world will be better off. You’re no good, no good at all.…
In the autumn of 1971 Don McLean's elegiac American Pie entered the collective consciousness, and over thirty years later remains one of the most discussed, dissected and debated songs that popular music has ever produced. A cultural event at the peak of its popularity in 1972, it reached the top of the Billboard 100 charts in a matter of weeks, selling more than 3 million copies. By identifying this great success it illustrates that it was no ordinary song. With its boldness, originality and it being thematically ambitious created uncertainty. Presenting the idea that we weren’t entirely sure what the song was about, provoking endless debates over its epic cast of characters. But however open to interpretation the lyrics may have been, the song's emotional resonance was unmistakable: McLean was clearly relating a defining moment in the American experience—something had been lost. Opening with the death of singer Buddy Holly and ending near the tragic concert at Altamont Motor Speedway, we are able to frame the span of years the song is covering—1959 to 1970—as the "10 years we've been on our own" of the third verse. It is across this decade that the American cultural landscape changed radically, passing from the relative optimism and conformity of the 1950s and early 1960s to the rejection of these values by the various political and social movements of the mid and late 1960s.…
Yet another song from this period is "A most Peculiar Man" about a lonely man living in one room who winds up killing himself. "And all the people said, what a shame that he's dead, but wasn't he a most peculiar man". They excuse themselves from any involvement in his death by saying he was…
In the third verse, Woody is walking through wheat fields while dust clouds are rolling. The fog is starting to lift as the sun comes up and again, this pristine moment just yells that this land was made for everyone. Then he repeats the chorus which brings back into mind the vastness of this country and how radical the land changes.…