A Romantic Touch Filled with Dance
“And can you teach me how to dance real slow?” McLean goes back to the romantic touch of the previous verse and is shown here courting Miss American Pie. The picture of the sock hop is another reference to the 1950’s when school dances mostly took place in high-school gyms, and the students danced in their socks to avoid damaging the polished wood floors.
Young men and women sit awkwardly together on chairs beside the dance floor, during a high school dance in the gymnasium at Monterey Union High School, while other couples dance in the background, Monterey, California, 1950. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
The narrator is rejected at this point, as the girl who he is interested in goes dancing with someone else. McLean is thus left behind with his pink carnation and his truck. As he is left stranded, he can’t think about anything else but Bye Bye Miss American Pie. By personifying America as a woman, it becomes more evident that the entire song is a farewell to the country he once knew.
At this point, the song is all set up, and the listener can make some sense about everything that is about to unfold. From now on, the song sets the music of the new era against some of the most representative musical figures of the 1960s as well as the shattering changes they represented in American culture.