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So the first line, a long, long time ago.

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You might hear this and think of Star Wars,

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but as I said, this is from 1971,

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and Star Wars, A New Hope was first released in 1977.

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So perhaps George Lucas was influenced by Don McLean,

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but not the other way around.

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But what we can say with this, a long, long time ago,

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I can still remember,

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is that obviously he's not talking about 1971.

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He's talking about something

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that happened farther in the past,

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and I'm going to give you a clue

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and tell you that it's about 1959.

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And obviously, 12 years have passed since then,

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so maybe his memory could be faded,

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but no, he still remembers

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how the music used to make him smile.

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Now, the use of the word used to here should be important

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because that's something that was true in the past,

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but isn't true anymore.

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So music used to make him smile, but now it doesn't.

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Now in 1971, he doesn't have that feeling

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with music anymore,

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and that's what this whole song is going to be about,

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this loss of innocence in American music.

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All right, then these next three lines go together,

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I think, quite well.

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Just think when you were a child

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and you saw a football star on TV

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and you thought, I'm going to grow up

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and I'm going to be a football star

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and I'm going to be even better than him,

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or I'm going to be an astronaut

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and I'm going to go to Mars and to the moon.

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Children are always inspired by our parents,

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by people on TV, and in this case,

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John McClane was really influenced

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by the musicians of his time,

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the ones who were always on the radio and even on TV

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because television was becoming popular

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in the 1950s and 60s.

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And he felt the same way.

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These people made him so happy.

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He thought, if I could become a music star,

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maybe I could make them happy too.

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And as it turned out, with this hit song, he really did.

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All right, but now the song is going to take a turn

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for the worse.

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But February made me shiver with every paper I deliver.

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Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more step.

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Well, first we've got this verb, shiver.

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And shiver is this action that we do

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that's like temblar, tiritar, tener escalofríos.

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This happens when you're cold, okay?

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February, it's cold.

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But that's also what we do

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when we hear something really shocking,

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news that we don't want to hear.

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So this is a play on words with shiver.

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Not only was it really cold in February of 1959,

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like I mentioned before,

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but also something shocking has happened.

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What?