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We Didn't Start the Fire
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"We Didn't Start the Fire" is a song by Billy Joel that makes reference to a catalog of headline events during his lifetime, from March 1949 to 1989, when the song was released on his album Storm Front. The events are mixed with a refrain asserting "we didn't start the fire". The song was a number-one hit in the U.S.
The song and video have been interpreted as a rebuttal to criticism of Joel's Baby Boomer generation, from both its preceding and succeeding generations, that they were responsible for much of the world's problems. The song's title and refrain imply that the frenzied and troubled state which others were criticizing had been the state of the world since long before his generation's time, but that this was being ignored by their critics. This message contrasts strongly with the song "Allentown", written earlier in his career, which blamed his parents' generation for contemporary problems.
HistoryJoel explained that he wrote this song due to his interest in history. He commented that he would have wanted to be a history teacher had he not become a rock and roll singer. Unlike most of Joel's songs, the lyrics were written before the melody, owing to the somewhat unusual style of the song. Nevertheless, the song was a huge commercial success and provided Billy Joel with his third Billboard #1 hit.
"We Didn't Start the Fire" was written by Joel after a conversation with John Lennon's son Sean. Sean was complaining that he was growing up in troubled times.
Although the song ranked #1 in the U.S., and #7 in the UK, Blender magazine ranked "We Didn't Start the Fire" #41 on its list of the "50 Worst Songs Ever". "We Didn't Start the Fire" also appeared in the same spot on VH1's 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever, a collaboration with Blender in 2004.
The Hoosiers covered the song as a B-side to their release, "Worried About Ray" and also performed it in their tour.
Chart positions
Historical items referred to in the songStream of consciousness in style, the song could be considered a natural successor to songs such as "Subterranean Homesick Blues", "Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)" and "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", as it consists of a series of unrelated images in a rapid-fire, half-spoken, half-sung vocal style.
The following events are in chronological order and are not necessarily in the order as they appear in the song, though in the actual song they are slightly reworded and are occasionally punctuated by the chorus and other lyrical elements. Events from a variety of contexts, such as popular entertainment, foreign affairs, and sports, are intermingled, giving an impression of the culture of the time as a whole.
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
- Joseph Stalin dies on March 5, yielding his position as leader of the Soviet Union.
- Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Stalin for six months following his death. Malenkov had presided over Stalin's purges of party "enemies", but would be spared a similar fate by Nikita Khrushchev mentioned later in verse.
- Gamal Abdel Nasser acts as the true power behind the new Egyptian nation as Muhammad Naguib's minister of the interior.
- Sergei Prokofiev, the composer, dies on March 5, the same day as Stalin.
- Winthrop Rockefeller establishes Winrock Enterprises and Winrock Farms atop Petit Jean Mountain near Morrilton, Arkansas.
- Roy Campanella, an African American baseball catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, receives the National League's Most Valuable Player award for the second time.
- Communist bloc is a group of communist nations dominated by the Soviet Union at this time.
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
- Buddy Holly dies in a plane crash on February 3 with Ritchie Valens and J. P. Richardson ("The Big Bopper"), in a day that had a devastating impact on the country and youth culture. The event was immortalized by Don McLean as "The Day the Music Died" in his famous tribute song American Pie. (As an intro to this stanza, Billy Joel mimics Buddy Holly's trademark "hiccup" style, singing a-UH-uh-oh...).
- Ben-Hur wins eleven Academy Awards as a film based around the New Testament starring Charlton Heston.
- Monkeys in space: Able and Miss Baker are the first living beings to successfully return to Earth from space aboard the flight Jupiter AM-18.
- Mafia are the center of attention for the FBI and public attention builds to this organized crime society with a historically Sicilian-American origin.
- Hula hoops reach 100 million in sales as the latest toy fad.
- Fidel Castro comes to power after a revolution in Cuba and visits the United States later that year on an unofficial twelve-day tour.
- Edsel: Production of this car marketing disaster (Ford spent $400 million developing it) ends after only two years.
1960
1961
1962
1963
- Pope Paul VI: Pope Paul VI is elected to the papacy.
- Malcolm X makes infamous statement "The chickens have come home to roost" about the Kennedy assassination, thus causing the Nation of Islam to censure him.
- Profumo Affair: The British Secretary of State for War has a relationship with a showgirl, and then lies when questioned about it before the House of Commons. When the truth came out, it led to his own resignation and undermined the credibility of the Prime Minister.
- John F. Kennedy assassination: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22 while riding in an open convertible through Dallas. The left audio track contains an inhalation in the background, followed a beat later by an exhalation in the background of the right audio track. The sound is characteristic of marijuana use.
1965
- Birth control: In the early 1960s, oral contraceptives, popularly known as "the pill", first go on the market and are extremely popular. Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 challenged a Connecticut law prohibiting contraceptives. In 1968, Pope Paul VI released a papal encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae which declared artificial birth control a sin.
- Ho Chi Minh: A Vietnamese Communist, who served as President of Vietnam from 1954–1969. March 2nd Operation Rolling Thunder begins bombing of the "Ho Chi Minh Trail" supply line from North Viet Nam to the Viet Cong rebels in the south. March 8th first US combat troops, 3,500 marines, land in South Viet Nam.
1968
- Richard Nixon: Former Vice President Nixon is elected in the 1968 presidential election of the United States.
1969
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