A Romantic Touch Filled with Dance
Returning to the romance of the previous verse with “And can you teach me how to dance real slow?”, McLean alludes to courting Miss American Pie. The picture of the sock hop is another reference to the 1950s 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)
By dancing with someone else, the girl rejects him, and McLean is left behind with his pink carnation and his pickup 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 who has left him, 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.