Are the lyrics to Miss American Pie considered blasphemous?

No, but I think the lyrics to Shakespearean Pie may be.

A long, long time ago

I can still remember

How, alas, poor Yorick's jokes drew groans

He'd dance and sing and kiss my hand

Like Elsinore was Neverland

But then he went and joined the Skull and Bones

And now, Horatio, I get shivers

With every line the ghost delivers

All the Globe has been dark

'Cause something rots in Denmark

I can't recall a thing as weird

As when dear old Daddy reappeared

To say that he'd been poison-eared

The day King Hamlet died

So:

To be or to choose not to be?

That's the question I'm digestin' in my soliloquy

And when fortune aims its slings and arrows at me

Tell me how I'm gonna live through Act III?

Answer, please, iambically

Did you like Shakespeare in Love?

And did you rewind for scansion of

Gwyneth with her wardrobe gone?

Now, do you believe in English Lit?

Is brevity the soul of wit?

If so, then why's this bloody play so long?

Well, I know this role has real cachet

For each Branagh and Olivier

Mel Gibson draws blood nice

Man, I dig that Passion of Christ!

I was a young, great Dane in British schools

With my pet Ophelia and a dad who rules

But I knew we'd been played for fools

The day King Hamlet died

So here's the question:

To be or choose rather to be

Suicidal or to idle apathetically,

Or is volition all it's cracked up to be

If "to die, to sleep, to dream" is lovely?

(Please explain the question to me)

Less than two months since the obit ran

And Lord knows, frailty, thy name's wo-man:

My dumbass uncle wears Dad's ring

So I set the stage for a royal sting

What a script! I thought, The play's the thing

Where I'll catch the conscience of the king

Oh, and while the king enjoyed the show

The players showed him whack his bro

The king stomped off and cried

O.J. yelled Homicide!

So Let's Make a Deal, Queen Mother, who

Is behind curtain number two?

How now, a rat? I sliced him through

The day Polonius died

I was thinking:

To be or to go with Plan B?

Is it nobler just to soldier on Shakespeareanly

Or fly off to the undiscovered country?

Thus my conscience makes a coward of me

Get me to a fun nunnery

Hanky panky? Nope, Ophelia's cranky

Could she be ticked that I nailed that Yankee?

Maybe 'cause I knifed her dad?

She shouted Foul! in her wrath

You'll never tread on my primrose path!

(Guess my joke 'bout "country matters" made her mad)

Now, the nymph went nutso north-northwest

Went and took a swim completely dressed

She sank just like a ship

So here's the moral: skinny-dip!

Poor Laertes missed his tour de France

But, merde, this ain't no cheap romance

(Ask Guildenstern and Rosencrantz)

The day Ophelia died

I kept on thinking:

To be or to other-than-be?

That's the question! Screw depression! Death sounds painless to me

This too too solid flesh should melt melt like brie

And resolve into a fondue for me

Serve it with some crumpets and tea

Oh, and there we were all in one place

Equipped with poison, swords, and Mace

With Fortune there to shape our ends

So come on - fence me nimble, fence me quick

Don't tase me, bro, with your tainted *****

Or bet your royal *** we're foiled again

So Laertes and I both got poked

Mom drank some Chinese lead-based Coke

The king was S.O.L.

Thus ends his sworded tale:

I said, My name ees Hamlet Junior, guy

You keeled my dad; prepare to die

(Yes, I stole that from The Princess Bride)

The day King Claudius died

Here's the question:

To be or choose alternately?

That's the question I'm processin' in Scene I of Act III

To end these shocks or bear them heart-achingly,

Quoting Sonnet Number 73?

(That one's too depressing for me)

[Soft you now]

I met a girl named Juliet

And her boyfriend, whose name I forget

(What's in a name, man, anyway?)

I led Othello to his death

And made life a ***** for King Macbeth

Till the Bard said, Dude, you're in a different play

So meanwhile back at Elsinore

A bunch of guys come to mop the floor

It's Fortinbras's legions

I guess we're now Norwegians

And the three co-stars I riled most:

Laertes, Mom, and King Claudi-os

Went off to hang with Daddy's ghost

The day Prince Hamlet died

I see dead people...

To be or choose oppositely?

Are we tougher if we suffer indefatigably

Or take up arms against a turbulent sea

Of the troubles fortune's slinging at me?

Screw it - let's go watch some TV

We were thinking:

To be or to not freaking be

That's the question we're obsessin' 'bout interminably

But as for us, the answer's clear: Not to be

Caught in this Shakespearean tragedy!

~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~

[Horatio:]

Good-night, sweet prince.

[Hamlet:]

I'm not quite dead...

http://www.thefump.com/fump.php?id=1014

Just click on play, you don't need to buy it.

American Pie

Who decides what's blasphemy? The song uses Christian references almost casually, and that constitutes blasphemy for many.

The lyrics are so densely packed with references that have multiple meanings that McLean couldn't have been doing anything casual in it. The 'Father, Son and Holy Ghost' are the 'three men I admire most', which argues against a personal (to McLean) counter-Christian reading but does *allow* for the interpretation that it references society's movement away from conventional religion. A question here is how much the song is specifically about the 60s counter-culture and how much of it is about changes in society in general.

But I think that's more of a passing comment in the song. My impression is that if McLean could possibly imbed more than one meaning/reference in a word or line, he did. I think the *primary* use of religious imagery is the passing of the sense of certainty and simplicity (the America of apple pies) as the counter-culture generation lost the hope that they would be able to bring about substantial and meaningful change.

For many young people, music had replaced religion as the means through which social values were discussed and transmitted, but it hadn't succeeded in bringing about the hoped for utopia. The musicians (and perhaps political figures (Kennedy, King and Kennedy) who were showing the positive way forward had died, sold out or broken up - Dylan went electric, then stopped touring after an accident, then refused to write protest songs; the Beatles ("All You Need is Love") disbanded and the Stones ("Sympathy for the Devil") became the most influential working band, the gains of the Civil Rights movement were overshadowed by race riots in several cities during the summer of '67, when Haight-Asbury was heaving with the "Summer of Love".

Read verse 6 with that last in mind. Neither music nor religion had a solution for the continuing social problems.

There is a lot of Christian themes and allegories that some may find distasteful, but it's more about Rock music,and the '60s and '70s. "Satan laughing with delight" refers to the Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil," and possible the Altamont riot.

"The Father Son, and Holy Ghost" represents Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper, who dies in 1959.

Exactly what the song means isn't always clear, but a lot of people have tried.

The link below discusses the song's many possible meanings.

The historical timing may not be correct, but I see it as poking jokes at rock music personages. The Seargeants are the Beatles as SPLHCB. The King is Elvis. The Byrds had a song titled "Eight Miles High", etc.

It's a good effort, although it gets rather stretched and sloppy because the images make no sense unless they are about something else , unless they are symbols. And I don't see religion or spirituality in it at all, neither good nor bad.

A reality of modern relationships is the knowledge that divorce statistics have been steadily escalating in recent years. Tips for avoiding divorce https://tr.im/ZcduK

Even now, all marriages have between a 40 and 50 percent chance of divorce, which increases for second and third marriages, which is why it's more important than ever to have the necessary skills to ensure your relationship is secure against the threat of divorce.

Here is a website that tells the story:

http://understandingamericanpie.com/index.htm

no, it is not blasphemous, it is paying tribute to an era and some great musicians that were killed in a plane crash. Is it a sad song, yes, blasphemous, no.

On what grounds? That the Bible is mentioned...or that "the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost...they caught the last train for the coast"? All I think Don McLean was writing about was how he felt upon hearing the news of the crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper. His faith was shaken, but not shaken enough to see "Satan laughing with delight" as Satan does with everyone as they suffer pain and loss.

I don;t see it as blasphemous at all; merely a state of humanity.

By the way, that is not a refrain, but a chorus. For an example of a refrain, refer to Jim Croce's "I'll Have To Say I Love You In A Song".

I'm a Christian. This song is awesome. It's not blasphemous. End of discussion.

how about an atheistic song about death?

Enough to be on Your Way

James Taylor

The sun shines on this funeral

The same as on a birth

The way it shines on everything

That happens here on Earth

It rolls across the western sky

And back into the sea

And spends the day's last rays

Upon this f ucked-up family

So long old pal

The last time I saw Alice

She was leaving Santa Fe

With a bunch of round-eyed Buddhists

In a killer Chevrolet

Said they turned her out of Texas

Yeah she burned 'em down back home

Now she's wild with expectation

On the edge of the unknown

CHORUS:

Oh it's enough to be on your way

It's enough just to cover ground

It's enough to be moving on

Home, build it behind your eyes

Carry it in your heart

Safe among your own

They brought her back on a Friday night

Same day I was born

We sent her up the smoke stack

And back into the storm

She blew up over the San Juan mountains

And spent herself at last

The threat of heavy weather

That was what she knew the best

CHORUS

It woke me up on a Sunday

An hour before the sun

It had me watching the headlights

Out on highway 591

'Til I stepped into my trousers

'Til I pulled my big boots on

I walked out on the Mesa

And I stumbled on this song

CHORUS

no, its not blasphemous. im catholic, and when it says that they caught the last train for the coast it is talking about how Jesus died on the cross and brought the music back because the it talked about the devil screwing up stuff the whole song, like moss growing on a rolling stone, and the devil being happy because everything was screwed