My posting yesterday ended with the #1 song half a century ago, which was  Jive Talking.   I mentioned that the shortest tune reaching #1 on Billboard was the 1960  Stay .   So before entering my blog of today, I was wondering what was the  longest song to hit #1 on Billboard , and consulted Guinness. This was difficult to find because Google kept sending me to the #1 song that spent the longest time in that slot. The 10-minute version of Taylor Swift's  All Too Well  went on for 10 minutes and 13 seconds.  But this was the extended version of this ballad that originally in 2012 appeared on the album Red, and was only 5min29sec long, which was re-released as a single at that length.  Here is her  10-minute version .  Did she attend the  NFL preseason game yesterday ?  No. So I guess Don McLean's 1972  American Pie  is the longest chart-topper at 8min37sec. But according to that chart above, Swift. As an asid...

Sunday is my spiritual day, and I many times post on religion.  Life and Death...God...our ultimate future.    Don McLean was recently interviewed,   and while I have written about him on numerous occasions, for his   American Pie   is about the death of Buddy Holly ( 22 ), Richie Valens ( 17 ) and the Big Bopper ( 28 ), this article evoked sufficient emotions as to inspire me to do this one more time. I was not aware that McLean had a premonition when he was 15 that his father was going to die.  A few days later, showing no particular symptoms, he dropped dead right in front of him.  His father was his hero. Now 75, he talked further of his 1971  American Pie  he wrote at the age of 24.  Said he cried for two years and blamed himself for his father's death.  Thus the song of the '60's from that plane crash, the day the music died.  His original handwritten lyrics sold in 2015 for $1.2 million.  A broadway show is pla...

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