What song defines your generation?

@exexec It's supposed to refer to the Buddy Holly plane crash but there's really no reference and there's lyrcis that have nothing to do with that event.

@graphite I got the Buddy Holly connection, but the rest of it???? I still like it.

@exexec

An interesting read - - https://americansongwriter.com/american-pie-don-mclean-meaning-lyrics-50-years-later/

@graphite It's there all right. 'February made me shiver' (a reference to February 3rd, 1959, when the plane crash happened). The 'widowed bride' was his wife (Buddy married Maria Elena Santiago in the summer of 1958).

@supersnipe And that's about it.

@SW-User That's a good article...it picks up some allusions in the song that I've always missed. McLean himself (I heard him interviewed about it some years go) was not very forthcoming about the 'meaning' of the song, saying something like 'it speaks to our disappointments'. I've got the interview on tape somewhere...

@supersnipe

Off topic a bit - I had a brilliant grade 10 English teacher (who later accepted a position at a private school in Toronto) who always asked the most incisive questions about whatever short story we were assigned but he never answered them... it was left up to us to find out on our own ( through life's journey, I suppose) what the heck he was getting at.