Basically, in 'American Pie,' things are heading in the wrong direction. It is becoming less ideal, less idyllic. I don't know whether you consider that wrong or right, but it is a morality song in a sense.

I have a weird sense sometimes of what's going to happen before it happens, and I kind of live by that, which is how my instincts operate, I suppose.

I was around in 1970, and now I am around in 2015 ... there is no poetry and very little romance in anything anymore, so it is really like the last phase of 'American Pie.'

Don McLean Quotes