non-Worldcon: "American Pie"

[kate_nepveu]

So I have long had this theory about the song "American Pie" by Don McLean, which is that for American teenagers of an appropriate age, it is something of a rite of passage to sit down and deliberately learn all the lyrics. Chad got around to buying the MP3 this weekend, and SteelyKid finds it soothing sung a capella, so this seems as good a time as any to test my theory:

[Poll #1435577]

ETA: yeah, I missed something crucial. See next rock.

Comments

[montoya.livejournal.com]

I don't even know all the lyrics to "Livin' on a Prayer"!

[kate_nepveu]

Dude, the first question is "At one time I knew all the lyrics". So you actually should just skip right to the ticky.

(Whoa-oh . . . )

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I learned it because it was chanted in unison at every single school event from elementary up through high school and played at every dance. After a while of that it becomes indelible.

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

I never heard it until I was in college, which was long after the song came out. I don't remember exactly what year it was, so I may technically have been a teenager at the time.

I was living in the U.S. at the time.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

I know most of the verses pretty well (4 and 5 don't stick). I first heard it in college in America long after it came out. In fact, I may have heard the Magic: the Gathering version (http://jhirning.bol.ucla.edu/humor/BYE_ATOG.html) first.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I never knew all the lyrics to "American Pie", but I may very well know all the lyrics to the Weird Al version. So much better than the movie.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I know all the Weird Al lyrics if I sing along! What an excellent summarization of the movie it was.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I have never known all the lyrics to American Pie.

I have also never known all the lyrics to Alice's Restaurant, but in my defense, they only play that once a year, on Thanksgiving. (I could probably tell the whole story; I just couldn't do it verbatim.)

However, I know the first verse of "Red River Valley" and the entirety of "The Rainbow Connection." ...In case you were in need of those.

[ckd]

I'm amused that Don MacLean has apparently had problems remembering the correct lyrics, because his kids played Weird Al's "The Saga Begins" so many times....

[pgdudda.livejournal.com]

Never learned the lyrics, despite growing up in the US. Didn't even hear the song for the first time till after I got out of college.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I now have the whole thing running through my head with a pink carnation and a pickup truck, dammit.

And I knew I was out of luck.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Of course, for me it's more about a really good memory for lyrics and a fondness for older music...

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

I spent all my teenage years in the US and never learned more than a fraction of the lyrics.

[pandarus.livejournal.com]

UnAmerican here, know all the lyrics, I think, although perhaps I'd trip over them? But know them pretty well. Don't know why, other than that my musical taste has always been rather retro and untrendy, and I sing to myself absentmindedly all the time.

[katharine-b.livejournal.com]

I usually lurk, but since nobody else has mentioned this option -- I learned them by heart as a CTY student (nerd summer camp!) in my early teens, in the mid-90s, in the US. CTY is now called IAAY, I think, but I would be really surprised if they don't still play "American Pie" at every weekly dance, at least at the campus I attended. See above re: chanting in unison, plus a loosely choreographed group dance thing that went along with it, and it was always the last song played, if I remember right. I'm pretty sure there were also alternate naughty lyrics for certain lines.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Woot, fellow nerd campers represent!

Wait, they changed the name to make it LONGER? Someone at JH is smoking the good crack.

I can't swear there was no American Pie when I was there (Dickinson campus, '87-'89) but the big thing at the dances was Stairway to Heaven, which let the coupled few sway for 20 blissful minutes while the unfortunate overage of women relieved our frustration by forming a giant chain and running in and around the couples.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

ERh... the song is referring to soemthing?

[neverjaunty.livejournal.com]

Heard it when I was still a little slip of a girl.

I HAZ AN OLD.

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

Another CTY alumna here; it was the traditional dance-ender during my years, too.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I was actually in Europe when it came out, but everyone who made me homemade tapes included it, which frosted me to no end. Then when I got back, it was on every radio station, it seemed. It's one of the reasons I switched to classical for pretty much all of the seventies, I hated it so much. Didn't go back to modern music until I got into the L.A. punk scene in the late seventies.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

I don't know when it came out but it was in my father's CD collection and we listened to it all the time as kids. Well before hitting teenagerhood, I would imagine.

[cvantien.livejournal.com]

If you're interested, the Australian version of this seems to be Khe Sanh (http://www.coldchisel.com.au/l1_khesahn.html), judging by how many Aussies sing this when drunk and/or at parties.

[mellificent.livejournal.com]

Judging from my (long-past) party-girl days, the Texas version is "London Homesick Blues". Although I do remember "American Pie" working its way in there from time to time, too.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I would just like to say I was Don McLean's travel agent when I lived in Nashville. Swell guy. Still like that song.

[kate_nepveu]

Cool!

[mellificent.livejournal.com]

I was 12 or so when it came out, and I liked it but the words made no sense to me or (as far as I know) to anybody else my age, at the time. I don't think I ever made a concerted effort to learn the words so much as I learned them in snatches here and there, and much later I made an effort to put it all together. I remember somebody telling me that it was about Buddy Holly, and I did vaguely know who Buddy Holly was, because he was somebody my mom liked. But heck, he died before I was born.

[cyphomandra.livejournal.com]

I grew up outside the US (New Zealand) and after the song, but my mother's musical tastes divide neatly into male singer-songwriters, usually protesting something (Tom Lehrer, Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton etc, in addition to Don McLean), and opera. I like to think I positively chose the first, but it's entirely possibly that I was just determined to avoid opera. This is a character flaw I have learned to live with.

A friend of mine said she used to sing American Pie while doing her early morning newspaper rounds because of the lyrics - especially in winter, although "February" is an unhelpful seasonal reference in the southern hemisphere!

[kate_nepveu]

This is a character flaw I have learned to live with.

Hah.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

I was not yet a teenager living outside the US and knew all the lyrics.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

Also Vincent & Dreidel. Still could do the yes if singing along thing.

[readinggeek451]

I learned the chorus as a teenager in the US, can still sing along to it (but not sing it cold), never did learn the verses. The Weird Al version is slowly supplanting it, however.