"I'm not that smart a guy," Don McLean bluntly informs GRAMMY.com, at the top of a recent interview. (Which is news to this writer, as McLean went on to compellingly expound on everything from George Floyd to the crisis in the Middle East and beyond, for a full hour.)

Rather, "I am a very instinctive person," he contends, over the phone from his home in California's Palm Desert. "I'm a bit of a weirdo in many ways, and the music reflects that."

Surveying his other key songs, McLean says he wrote in "a different style of music for 'Castles in the Air,' and a different style for 'Wonderful Baby,' and a different style for 'Vincent.' Every time, there's a different person in me that comes out."

Indeed, the man we all know for the eight-and-a-half-minute epic "American Pie" — which was nominated for four golden gramophones at the 1973 GRAMMYs — is hardly one-note; his body of work is a kaleidoscope.

Which, naturally, extends to his latest album, American Boys, which dropped May 15. His first album of original material since 2018's Botanical Garden is a cornucopia of subjects, and characters — the "Thunderstorm Girl," the "Stone Cold Gangster," the "Mexicali Gal."

"Instinctive" McLean certainly is, and instinct and inspiration go hand in hand. Here are five inspirations behind American Boys, as stated by the master himself.

America's Rock 'N Roll Innovators

Cleverly looping back to "American Pie," the album's opener, "American Boys," salutes the foundational figures of early rock, who belted "rhythm and blues with a hillbilly soul": Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and "The Fat Man."

If you recall, the far more somber and cryptic "American Pie" grapples with the young deaths of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper in a 1959 plane crash," a tragedy McLean codified as "The Day the Music Died." They truly don't make them like that anymore: what is it about America that produced such game-changing young talent back then?

"I have theories about things. We were a lot closer to the land once," McLean says. "We're living in a very techno, fake, computer-created world now.

"Those boys that I mentioned in that song, whether it was Johnny Cash, or Elvis, or Buddy, or any of them, they were all just one step away from the cotton fields, or the truck they'd be driving," he continues. "They were close to the land, and there's something about the land that produces the music."

Living Out In The Desert

McLean grew up in the Larchmont Woods in New Rochelle, New York — but he eventually picked up sticks and became a desert man.

"I do things for the oddest reasons," McLean says. "But, they're the real reasons, and I can look at myself and say, 'I did what I wanted to do with my life. Nobody told me what to do, ever.'"

What about the desert speaks to him, or flows through this music? It comes back to that sense of authenticity.

"A sense of truth. I must be true," McLean says, in an echo of the American Boys track “Truth and Fame.”  "I'm not interested in society, and I'm not interested in what people expect from me. I'm interested in being true to myself, and to my ideas, and that's all."

Or, to put it more bluntly, "I don't give a f— and I never have."

Femme Fatales, Real Or Imagined

Reciting a verse of the swaggery, swampy, bluesy "Stone Gold Gangster," McLean puts on his best tough-guy, '70s-caper voice: "Dressed like a hoodlum princess/ Carrying a .44 gun/ Comes from down south with a filthy mouth/ Done everything that's been done."

"It's about your female hustler, gangster-type person, and it's a very interesting track that we created," McLean says. "I used a lot of sources for that."

The Murder Of George Floyd

On a totally different note, McLean was deeply rattled — as most of us were — by the 2020 murder of George Floyd, one of the pivotal events of our young decade.

Watching the horrible footage, McLean flashed back to his youth, missing swaths of his school year due to chronic asthma that led to pneumonia. He and his mother even had a system: If he couldn't breathe in the middle of the night, he'd bang the floor with a bat to get her.

"I just heard him calling for his mother. I said, 'Nobody is dangerous who's calling for their mother,'" McLean says. "This was a sad little man who didn't have anything, and now he's just reduced to calling for mom. This song just came right out of me."

The Ambience Of His Early Years

McLean is a self-professed "fifties guy," which he admits is a clash with modernity. "I know this is a new America. We have all sorts of new things going on, and we've got to adapt or die. Even as politics and culture, in his estimation, are in the pits.

"We are living in a very medieval time, not an intellectual time now." Music, McLean says, has "only gotten cleaner, and cleaner, and cleaner, and cleaner, and now human hands are not clean enough; our colleges are "going to produce a dumb population that is going to produce dumb music, and it's going to produce dumb leaders."

But he can protest in his own, personal way: in his art, he retrieves a fading America. "I Shall Find My Way" and "Resurrection Man" have an ageless, benedictory heft.

"Marley's Song (Save Yourself)" draws from the film A Christmas Carol — ostensibly the famous 1951 version. "It's about seeing a movie, but the movie is really your life," he's said. And "The Gypsy Road" is "a hobo song, in a way."

Clearly, this American boy knows what made him — and how it all flowed into his winning new album.

Living Legends: Van Morrison On New Album 'Moving On Skiffle,' Communing With His Roots & Reconnecting With Audiences

Shortly before GRAMMY winner James Blake treated 300 or so lucky GRAMMY Museum guests to a lively conversation and acoustic piano performance, the British electro-soul artist caught up with the Recording Academy. In our Behind The Scenes conversation, Blake spoke about his empowered 2019 album, Assume Form—which is currently nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 2020 GRAMMYs—and how he chose the epic collaborator list that includes current Best New Artist nominee Rosalía, André 3000, Travis Scott and Moses Sumney.

The "Retrograde" singer also shared who inspired him to pursue a career in music. (Spoiler alert, the answer is really cute.)

Watch our exclusive Behind The Scenes video with Blake below, and read on to learn more about the late-2019 GRAMMY Museum event, including what five songs he performed.

"They're just all some of my favorite artists, so it was a dream come true, really, of a collaborator list," he told us. "I've been lucky enough that some of the people that I listen to also listen to some of my music and were happy to oblige to part of it."

"I think they all brought something really unique and we were on the same wavelength when we were making the music, so it feels natural, it feels kind of organic, and I'm so happy and honored they were able to join it."

Watch: Billie Eilish On Her Long Relationship With The GRAMMY Museum, How Rihanna Shaped Her Fashion Sense & More

Blake also shared how influential his father, the senior James Litherland (Blake was born James Blake Litherland), has been to his own music. Litherland is a life-long musician and played with the late-'60s U.K. rock outfit Colosseum. In 2011, Blake covered and reimagined his father's song "Where to Turn" on "The Wilhelm Scream," featured on his 2011 self-titled debut album.

"Over my career, there's been a running theme of coming into the foreground…with every reveal, comes some kind of risk," Blake told GRAMMY Museum's Artistic Director Scott Goldman, who moderated the event. "If Assume Form was anything, it was not only a version of songwriting clarity but also emotional clarity. It was the most clear I'd felt in a long time, so it was a good time to make an album."

Read: Find Out Who Just Made History With Their GRAMMY Nominations: 2020 GRAMMYs By The Numbers

He also dove a bit more into the album's collaborators, praising André's musicality and his "heady-ass verse" on "Where's The Catch." "His verse is f**king genius and I couldn't have written that." Blake also shared his love of Spanish nu-flamenco queen Rosalía, who brought her otherworldly vocals and fierceness to "Barefoot In The Park," noting that working with her felt super easy and natural.

After the in-depth conversation, Blake made his way over to the piano for a soulful performance that opened with Assume Form's "Are You In Love?" and closed with his "favorite song ever written about a relationship:" Joni Mitchell's "Case Of You," which he covered on his 2011 EP, Enough Thunder. In between those two heartwrenching love songs, he treated fans to "Love Me In Whatever Way," from 2016's The Colour In Anything, "Overgrown," from his 2013 album of the same name, and "Vincent," his 2017 Don McLean cover.

Don't forget to tune into the 62nd GRAMMY Awards on Sun., Jan. 26 to find out if Blake will take home the golden gramophone for Best Alternative Music Album. GRAMMY.com and CBS will be your ticket to find out all the winners and watch all the fun on GRAMMY day—see you there!

Lightning In A Bottle 2020 Lineup: James Blake, KAYTRANADA, Doja Cat, Bob Moses, Four Tet, GRiZ & More

(For a list of 54th GRAMMY Awards nominees, click here.)

Music's Biggest Night, the 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards, will air live from Staples Center in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.

In the weeks leading up to the telecast, we will take a stroll down music memory lane with GRAMMY Rewind, highlighting the "big four" categories — Album Of The Year, Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, and Best New Artist — from past awards shows. In the process, we'll examine the winners and the nominees who just missed taking home a GRAMMY, while also shining a light on the artists' careers and the eras in which the recordings were born.

Join us as we take an abbreviated journey through the trajectory of pop music from the 1st Annual GRAMMY Awards in 1959 to last year's 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards.


15th Annual GRAMMY Awards
March 3, 1973

Album Of The Year
Winner: George Harrison & Friends, The Concert For Bangladesh
Neil Diamond, Moods
Don McLean, American Pie
Harry Nilsson, Nilsson Schmilsson
Original Broadway Cast, Jesus Christ Superstar

The Concert For Bangladesh, the first major benefit album, took top honors at the 15th Annual GRAMMY Awards. GRAMMYs were presented to Harrison, who organized the project, and to the featured artists, including Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, Ravi Shankar, Ringo Starr, and Klaus Voormann, among others. It was the second award in the category for both Harrison and Starr, following a win for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band five years earlier. Clapton and Dylan would go on to win Album Of The Year on their own in the '90s with Unplugged and Time Out Of Mind, respectively. The Concert…, which was recorded at Madison Square Garden, was the first live album to win the award since Judy Garland's Judy At Carnegie Hall, which was likewise recorded in New York, just one decade earlier.

Jesus Christ Superstar was in the running for the second year in a row, thanks to the release of the original Broadway cast album. The initial concept album had been a finalist in 1971. This was the first Broadway cast album to make the category since Funny Girl in 1964. McLean was nominated for his album American Pie, which spawned the smash title song and the graceful ballad "Vincent." Nilsson was nominated for Nilsson Schmilsson, which contained the hits "Without You" and "Coconut." Diamond was nominated for his album Moods, which spawned the hits "Song Sung Blue" and "Play Me."

The 2024 Paris Olympics came to life today as the Parade of Nations glided along the Seine River for the opening ceremony. The opening spectacular featured musical performances from Lady Gaga, Celine Dion, and more. Earlier in the week, some of music’s biggest names were also spotted in the city for the Olympics, including Olympics special correspondent Snoop Dogg, BTS' Jin, Pharrell Williams, Tyla, Rosalía, and Ariana Grande.

In a grand entrance, Lady Gaga emerged behind a heart-shaped plume of feathers on the golden steps of Square Barye, captivating the audience with her cover of the French classic "Mon truc en plumes." Accompanied by cabaret-style background dancers, she flawlessly belted out the song, executed impressive choreography, and even played the piano.

Celine Dion 

Since Ice Spice first caught our attention two summers ago, she's been nothing short of a rap sensation. From viral hits like her breakout "Munch (Feelin' U)," to co-signs from Drake and Cardi B, to a Best New Artist nomination at the 2024 GRAMMYs, the Bronx native continues to build on her momentum — and now, she adds a debut album to her feats.

Ice Spice is one of the few ladies holding down the New York drill scene on a mainstream level. She's particularly rooted in Bronx drill, a hip-hop subgenre known for its hard-hitting 808s, high-hats and synthesizers — and according to the sounds of Y2K!, it’s seemingly always going to be part of her artistry.

Minus a few tunes, all of Ice Spice's songs start off with her signature "Stop playing with 'em, Riot" catchphrase — a direct nod to her right-hand man RiotUSA. Ice and Riot met while attending Purchase College in New York, and they've been making music together since 2021's "Bully Freestyle," which served as Ice's debut single. "As I was growing, she was growing, and we just kept it in-house and are growing together," Riot told Finals in a 2022 interview.

Named after Ice Spice's birthdate (January 1, 2000), her debut album celebrates all things Y2K, along with the music and colorful aesthetics that defined the exciting era. To drive home the album's throwback theme, Ice tapped iconic photographer David LaChapelle for the cover artwork, which features the emcee posing outside a graffiti-ridden subway station entrance. LaChapelle's vibrant, kitschy photoshoots of Mariah Carey, Lil' Kim, Britney Spears, and the Queen of Y2K Paris Hilton became synonymous with the turn of the millennium.

Whether she's flaunting her sex appeal in "B— I'm Packin'" or demanding potential suitors to sign NDAs in "Plenty Sun," Ice exudes confidence from start to finish on Y2K!.

In album opener "Phat Butt," Ice boasts about rocking Dolce & Gabbana, popping champagne, and being a four-time GRAMMY nominee: "Never lucky, I been blessed/ Queen said I'm the princess/ Been gettin' them big checks in a big house/ Havin' rich sex," she asserts.