McLean himself has so far declined to provide any detailed answers, saying, 'If I told people what I meant, they'd just say, 'No you didn't.'' The song's varied interpretations have been widely debated for decades now.
The phrase became a part of popular culture when McLean used it in his hit song 'American Pie,' a cryptic song featuring ambiguous imagery and a coded history of rock 'n' roll. Musician Don McLean's recollection of the day (as a paperboy) he cut open a stack of newspapers to find that rock-n-roll pioneer Buddy Holly had died led him to coin the term 'the day the music died' to describe 3 February 1959: the date on which a plane crash took the lives of Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P.
