The fourth verse speaks to the more violent, darker side of the 1960s.

Rock and Roll came of age expressing the youthful ideals of the 1960s, but by the end of the decade the Beatles had broken up, Bob Dylan had become reclusive and had distanced himself from the protest songs of his early years, and the Rolling Stones had become hedonistic, full-fledged rock stars (“moss grows fat on a Rolling Stone”). The third verse laments how the musical icons of that era were no longer the voices of their generation. The rest of the verses look back on the 1960s. Still, this verse describes the universal experience of lost or perhaps unrequited love. The second verse is more personal in the sense that it does not reference any major historical or musical figure (except, perhaps, for the Monotones, who released “The Book of Love” in 1958). The Big Bopper was 28, Buddy Holly was 22, and Ritchie Valens was only 17 when their plane went down, and Buddy Holly had been married for less than six months (“I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride”). In the first verse “the day the music died” refers to the plane crash in 1959 that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, all of whom were very young. Most of these moments revolve around music and its potentially redemptive powers, but the song also makes cryptic references to larger political issues of the time. The song is about disillusion, and each of the song’s six verses describes a moment of despair (“the day the music died”) for that generation. “American Pie” is the (early) Baby Boomer coming-of-age story, as the chronology of the song runs roughly from 1959 to 1971, the year “America Pie” was released. I believe “American Pie” by Don McLean makes a reference to the JFK assassination.

American pie song analysis