July 04, 2004

• I honestly don't understand the endless fascination with the "meaning" of the lyrics. Geez, if McLean had such important things to say, then WTF didn't he just SAY THEM, instead of couching them in obscure references??? Catchy tune, crappy lyrics. But a good link, nonetheless.
• I dunno, I quite like the lyrics myself. And the endless fascination stems (partly) from the fact that McLean refuses to explain them beyond a few generalities, which leads people to run around in circles speculating on possible meanings. There are actually quite a few of these explanations floating around. Even the Straight Dope has one. And for those who prefer the Madonna version: YOU MUST BE INSANE! /troll
• Next FPP: is Alnedra a troll? I keed, I lurve the hot librarian...
• I lurve you too, surlyboi. I dedicate the next FPP to you ;)
• I liked Weird Al's version better.
• I think there's a balance to interpretation. Most music lyrics, like most good poetry, shouldn't be completely blatent and obvious; then they are insipid and have no depth. There is obviously a range - ballads are often not very mysterious (if they have a story to tell) though they will still have allusions and metaphors. Whereas songs like this are densely packed with allusion - something which I enjoy more in music (where the music sustains the emotion) than in poetry. But while it is interesting to read interpretations like this (and this will inform my listening of the song), you can take interpretation too far. There is a good reason that you want lyrics like these to be so unclear - because then they can take on multiple meanings. It may be that many lines have no single reference, because they suposed to have several. Personally, I had heard/seen the lines "I drove my chevy to the levee / But the levee was dry" as the image of a young man driving to where he had swum as a young boy in the innocent 50's, but that time is lost - just like how the good ol' boys are drinking whiskey and rye. It's completely different from the interpretation here, but it continues and supports the theme of loss of innocence and happiness. The lyrics may have been written to conciously evoke such multiple interpretations - and it adds to the strength and longevity of the song.
• that song was such an anthem when it came out, back when i was young and foolish. /but so much dissection; i don't remember taking it that seriously at the time.
• I think that you are reading too much into this song. I still think it's about pie.
• A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs A poem should be equal to: Not true For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea - A poem should not mean But be." --Archibald MacLeish
• Marianne Moore - Poetry I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine. Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise if it must, these things are important not because a high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are useful. When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the same thing may be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand: the bat holding on upside down or in quest of something to eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the base- ball fan, the statistician-- nor is it valid to discriminate against 'business documents and school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry, nor till the poets among us can be 'literalists of the imagination'--above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall we have it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, you are interested in poetry.
• Nobody's said it yet? Must rectify: Mmmmmmmmmm, pie.
• Way back in the 1950s, there were a series of Chevy commercials and one of them, as sung by Dinah Shore, went like this: Drive your Chevrolet through the USA, America's the greatest land of all On a highway or a road along a levee... ..life is completer in a Chevy So make a date today to see the USA And see it in your Chevrolet.
• also pie [flash and sound].
• A poem should not mean But be." There's a can of worms Archibald himself ate on occasion.
• I have an absolutely irrational hatred for that damn song because I once had it stuck in my head for two weeks. TWO WEEKS I tell you! (This may be blasphemy but I find the lyrics insipid) ::hides::
• Stirfry, there aren't many words that rhyme with Chevy, are there? I think I went through a Don McLean phase in my first year at college when I fell in with a whole lot of angsty musicians that sat around contemplating lyrics. I remember sitting up all night once dissecting every song in The Wall until I fell asleep from boredom.
• Chevy, man? Heavy, man.
• i think that i shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree. joyce kilmer.
• Spent Sunday dreamin' of the bevy Of rowdy girls in my old Chevy
• sorry space kitty, i mean no harm
• hee! no worries, humandictionary, it's a lovely post & I shouldn't have peed in your pool. *sings badgerbadgerbadger song preemptively*
• there there Space Kitty, there there . . . I once heard a radio station on it's final day of whatever format it was leaving - they played "American Pie" twice, then a station ID, then the song twice again, etc. I must have listened to it for an hour trying to memorize the lyrics. Just because it'd be cool to reel it off if no one's expecting it. However, I don't think I actually memorized more than I knew already. *shrug* Also, I like a little bit of hillbilly-yodel-falsetto on "them good ^ol'^ boys" part. In retrospect, maybe I should have stuck with "Alice's Restaurant"
• alice? arlo? woody? wow, pete to the nth, you like the good music. sing to me? please?
• Let's all join in for a rousing chorus of Alice's Restaurant. That's got to be one of the funnest songs in existence. You can get, anything you want, At Alice's Restaurant... Damn, now I have to go listen to it.
• I always thought it was a song about capitalism: Buy, buy Ms. American Pie She's got cherry she's got lemon, and the lemon, oh my!
• ... except Alice!
• ...twenty-seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, explaining what each one was... And a seeing-eye dog. Typical blind justice. Hmm, maybe we need a top 100 All-American songlist.
• er, trac, we are a bit of a polygot group so shouldn't it be a top 100 all-monkey song list? /even if all the music does tend to originate from one country, monkey tastes are international. yes, we have no bananas
• I've been up here posting for twenty-five minutes . . . I ain't proud . . . Let's just wait for it to come around on the guitar, here
• "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?"
• Ah yes, dxlifer, but there are so many American Pie-type songs out there. Not to mention the satirical American Pies, like Dennis Leary's I'm An Asshole.