Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Day The Music Died: American Pie’ on Paramount+, Tracking The History And Meaning Of Don McLean’s Legacy Song

Does everyone’s inner child come out when they hear Don McLean’s signature song? That’s what The Day the Music Died: American Pie (Paramount+) posits. The Mark Moorman-directed documentary features interviews with McLean, testimonials from Garth Brooks and others, and a look at the writing and legacy of “American Pie” – all eight-and-a-half minutes of it – which in 2001 was named one of the best songs of the century by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment of the Arts.

THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED: AMERICAN PIE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “It feels like it’s always existed.” “It’s woven into American culture.” Those are just some of the hot takes captured in The Day the Music Died: American Pie, where Don McLean’s 1971 folk-rock opus is celebrated as an elliptical study of life and legend in the US of A. McLean himself, now in his 70s, drives the biographical piece of the narrative, recalling his early days in middle class New Rochelle, New York, where his father dreamed of sending him to West Point but he was head over heels for the burgeoning sound of rock ‘n’ roll. “‘Heartbreak Hotel,’” he says, was “magic. It took your brains.” Elvis Presley, of course, figures into the rangy verses of “American Pie,” as does the fateful February 3,1959 plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. American Pie travels to Clear Lake, Iowa, and the farmland where it happened; there’s a humble marker where people leave hundreds of pairs of glasses, honoring Buddy on their pilgrimage. It also interviews Connie Valens, Ritchie’s sister, who lives in Clear Lake and to this day honors her brother’s memory. Garth Brooks appears here, too, offering his own testimonial to “American Pie.” He’d perform it in singalong form as a musician starting out on the country circuit, and says “it’s one of the few songs you can stand behind and say, ‘This is what the power of music is.’”

As McLean explains his immersion in the folk scene of the 1960s and performing with Pete Seeger, one of his biggest songwriting inspirations, American Pie tracks the tumult of the era, and how McLean and other singers were inspired to write “big songs” that examined the frayed edges of American culture. It also interviews contemporary Americana musician Jade Bird as she records a cover version of “American Pie” in a Nashville studio. Bird compliments the song’s “timeless melody,” and relates that it’s the de facto drunk singalong as the bars close in her native United Kingdom.

The most revealing thing here is the doc’s last section, where McLean and producer Ed Freeman describe the recording sessions for the 1971 album American Pie. Of course, McLean’s title opus went to number one on the charts, and has passed into legend. But none of that was clear in the sessions, recreated here, which were marked by conflict. McLean shares spiral pages with his original structure and lyrics for the song, including some not used in the final version, and Freeman describes how it was piano player Paul Griffin that ended up saving the day, providing the gel for McLean and the other musicians to settle into and kick themselves into high gear.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? American Pie director Mark Moormann also helmed Tom Dowd & the Language of Music, the Grammy-nominated documentary about the life and career of Dowd, a pioneering producer and recording engineer. And in Netflix’s Miss Americana, Taylor Swift explores her own work as a songwriter. In 2021, Swift sent flowers to Don McLean when her ten-minute song “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” knocked “American Pie” from its longtime perch as the longest No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

Performance Worth Watching: Ed Freeman, the American Pie producer, admits that he initially didn’t think much of McLean’s songwriting, and that he pressed to have studio musicians, not McLean, play the record’s guitar parts. But he also offers a wistful take on how the song reflects on the civil rights movement and peace initiatives of the era. “For me, ‘American Pie’ is the eulogy for a dream that didn’t take place.”

Memorable Dialogue: McLean labored over the lyrics to “American Pie” for a period of years. “Now, I’m thinking, ‘Where do I go with this?’ ‘Cause I want to write a song about the new America, which is rock ‘n’ roll, which is people’s involvement in politics and the connection between all of that, rather than, you know, ‘My country, ‘Tis of Thee, or ‘This Land is Your Land.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Don McLean, who still performs regularly, appears in The Day the Music Died: American Pie in jovial storyteller mode. Somebody wants to make a documentary about his most famous song to celebrate its 50th anniversary? Well by gum, pull up a chair. He’s full of anecdotes about touring with Pete Seeger, and playing the 1969 Newport Folk Festival, where he picked the Everly Brothers’ brains about their friendship with Buddy Holly. And he’s more than happy to rhapsodize over the enduring legacy of “American Pie” and the meaning behind its lyrics. Between him and Garth Brooks, it becomes a Mount Rushmore of songs where every head is McLean’s. Cue Garth gushing about how everyone’s inner child comes out when they hear it, and sweeping aerial shots of a classic car show in Iowa framed against an American flag flapping in the breeze. McLean, Brooks – even Peter Gallagher gets into the act, who in one of the doc’s most random segments is found to be recording an audiobook version of a children’s book based on McLean’s life and “American Pie.” It’s in that moment that The Day the Music Died feels most like something Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy might have written into the plot of A Mighty Wind.

Our Call: SKIP IT. While McLean heads might thrill to some of the inside information shared about the original recording sessions for the song, The Day the Music Died: American Pie ultimately makes too many broad assumptions about its seating in the American firmament.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges