Songoftheday 3/16/22 - A long, long time ago I can still remember, how that music used to make me smile...

 

 

"American Pie" - Madonna

from the album The Next Best Thing (Original Soundtrack) (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #29 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 6

 

Today's song is from Madonna, who we last had on the series with her trippy dance cut from the movie Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, "Beautiful Stranger" which hit the pop top-40 in the summer of 1999. The following year, the multi-hyphenate starred in her tenth major film The Next Best Thing with Rupert Everett, playing a woman who has a baby with her gay bestie, only to find love and decide to move away. Madonna also contributed two songs to the movie's soundtrack, the original "Time Stood Still", and a cover of the rock classic "American Pie". Originally recorded by its writer, Don McLean, the song was a poetic history of rock and roll lesson, an over eight minute opus that illustrated the greats of music in literally characters, but referencing most prominently "the day the music died", which was meant to portray the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper in 1959. The record plays like a suite or different tempos and sections, and even though it covered two "sides" of a vinyl "single", the track was played as a single piece all over radio, and for awhile held the title of "the longest #1 in pop" (until Taylor Swift recently shot that down), when it topped Billboard magazine's Hot 100 for four weeks in January of 1972...

 

 Nearly thirty years later, Everett gave Madonna the idea to cover the song for the movie. Using producer William Orbit, the dance-oriented guy that also helmed "Beautiful Stranger", the beloved track was chopped and screwed, tossing huge chunks of lyrics and keeping the chorus intact to a jarring electronica beat. Her voice, though cleaner than it has ever been, feels disconnected from the meaning of the lyrics, and the bleeps and bloops from Orbit interfere with the plaintive vibe they originally portrayed. The result is a big mess than even Madonna disavows in retrospect...

Nevertheless, Madonna's version of "American Pie" returned her to the pop top 40 in America in March of 2000. The song also placed on both the older-skewing Adult Top-40 (#20) and "easy listening" Adult Contemporary (#21) radio format charts in Billboard. The remixes of the track, done by the likes of Victor Calderone and Richard "Humpty" Vission, topped the Dance Club Play chart for a week as well. Internationally, the single did much better, topping the charts in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Hungary, Iceland, Romania, and the Czech Republic. It also made the top ten in Ireland (#2), Denmark (#2), Austria (#3), Greece (#3), Canada (#4), New Zealand (#4), the Netherlands (#6), Belgium (#6F/#7W), and France (#8). The Next Best Thing soundtrack, released in February of that year, peaked at #34 on the Billboard 200 sales tally. Madonna will return triumphantly to this series.

(3/10)

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Here's the radio mix for the Richard "Humpty" Vission remix of "American Pie" that helped Madonna top the dance chart...

Up tomorrow: An tragically aspiring R&B icon has reservations.