Happy for a While (2023)

Phil Dellio’s sixth book—most of them in collaboration with Scott Woods—sees him going solo and focused primarily on one thing: the song “American Pie” by Don McLean. The book was originally intended for the Duke University Press “Singles” series—Joshua Clover, Roadrunner; Chris Molanphy, Old Town Road; and more on the way. Much like the 33-1/3 series with albums, these short books focus on more or less hit singles, “distributed to and heard by millions that create a shared moment [that they are] bound to outlive.” I’m not entirely sure “Roadrunner” has been heard by millions, but it’s been around nearly 50 years and is much beloved, including by me, so maybe. Happy for a While was subsequently declined after news came to light of McLean pleading to domestic violence charges in 2016. At that point, Phil (full disclosure: a friend) returned once again to the self-publishing well of his last three books, expanded this one beyond “American Pie” into a fuller meditation on early-‘70s pop music, specifically 1972, and appended some long perspective on life, pop music, social media, and other matters in an epilogue (hence the subtitle “American Pie,” 1972, and the Awkward, Confusing Now). The result may be the best thing Phil has written yet. He expertly argues for the unique mitigating factors that could produce such an odd hit as “American Pie,” including the ’50s nostalgia that started in the late ‘60s, the rise of singer-songwriters in the early ‘70s (by far the most successful commercial period for these various troubadours), and the increasing acceptance of longer songs on hit radio and in general. Writing 50 years after the fact—not unlike McLean writing a dozen years after his central fact, the plane crash that took Buddy Holly—Happy for a While inevitably trucks in nostalgia to some degree. When I characterized it on social media as “a great treatment of how the '50s became the '60s became the '70s in music,” I stopped and realized that’s old. The frequent sadness of Phil’s writing accommodates the nostalgia well, but it is also countered by the clinical precision of his analysis. He charts with exquisite detail, for example, how the average length of #1 hits grew by approximately 61 seconds from 1966 to 1972. He loves what he’s talking about and he knows what he’s talking about. My only complaint about this book, aside from the usual small quarrels over tastes—he likes the Carpenters more than me and I love “Superstar”—is that Phil had to self-publish it. It’s already essential for any collection of books about 20th-century music. Hey, publishers. If you want it, here it is. Come and get it.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.