Singer of best-known song, 1st Musikfest headliner, coming to Wind Creek

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — A singer with a song that's consistently listed among the best and best-known of all time — and who headlined the first Musikfest — will play Wind Creek Event Center.

Don McLean, whose 1971 song “American Pie” was No. 1 for four weeks and was chosen No. 5 on the RIAA's list of Songs of the Century, will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 30, it was announced.

Tickets, at $39.50-$69.50, will go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, Feb. 20, at the event center website or at the box office at 77 Wind Creek Blvd., Bethlehem.

McLean, 80, is best known for “American Pie,” a long rock ballad inspired by the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper in 1959 and which popularized the expression “The Day the Music Died.”

It sold six times platinum and spent 12 weeks in Billboard's Top 100, and got four Grammy Award nominations, including Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

The tune, at 8:36, for more than 50 years after its release held the record for the longest song to reach No. 1, until Taylor Swift's "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" broke the record in 2021.

"American Pie" was listed at No. 5 on the RIAA project Songs of the Century, chosen in a 2001 poll by the National Endowment for the Arts and the RIAA with historical significance in mind.

In 2002, "American Pie" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 2004, McLean was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

McLean's album of the same name also hit No. 1 and sold double-platinum. That disc also included the No. 1 platinum hit “Vincent,” a tribute to post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh.

McLean had five other albums that hit the Billboard chart through 1981, and overall has released 21 albums of new material. His latest was "American Boys" in 2024.

McLean in 1984 was a headliner for the first year of Bethlehem's Musikfest festival, where he played a free concert for an estimated 3,500 people.