Madonna Listens

10/22/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

Rupert Everett is just as persuasive as you might have thought. It was he who convinced Madonna, his co-star in the new movie "The Next Best Thing," to record her own version of Don McLean's 1971 classic "American Pie." (The song appears on the movie's soundtrack.) "I thought, 'Who am I to do a cover of a pop classic?' " Madonna told New York's Daily News. "But I was working in the studio on other music, and it was like, 'OK, let's just try it.' And it kind of worked, to my surprise." Listen carefully and you can also hear Everett singing in the background of the song. "To me, it's a real millennium song," Madonna said, loftily. Meanwhile, in its third week on the Billboard chart, the single itself climbed to the No. 29 spot -- up from 35.