Peak
1
Weeks
19
Score
3,929
Chart Year
1989
A music video for the song was directed by Chris Blum.[13] The video begins with a newly married couple entering their 1940s-style kitchen, and shows events in their domestic life over the next four decades, including the addition of children, their growth, and later, grandchildren, and the eventual death of the family's father. The passage of time is also depicted by periodic redecoration and upgrades of the kitchen, while an unchanging Billy Joel looks on in the background. Joel is also shown banging on a table in front of a burning backdrop depicting various images that include the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém and the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, among others.
The lyrics are a stream-of-consciousness list of events that Joel felt his generation was not responsible for. A lot of the references are to the Cold War (US vs. Russia), a problem his generation inherited. In the liner notes of Piano Man: The Very Best of Billy Joel, Joel explains that he wrote the song after a conversation with John Lennon's son Sean. "I started with Harry Truman because in 1949, the year I was born, Harry Truman was president," said Joel. "From there it kind of wrote itself." Joel was in the studio trying to come up with song ideas for the album, when Sean Lennon stopped by with his friend, who had just turned 21 and was lamenting over how tough his generation had it. Joel, who was approaching 40, commiserated with the young men, recalling how 21 was also a tough age for him with the Vietnam War, civil rights upheavals, and other crises. But Joel was astounded when Sean's friend claimed Joel didn't have it so bad because he grew up in the '50s, and "everyone knows that nothing happened in the '50s." In response, Joel started jotting down all of the events and major figures he could remember from his generation and a song idea was born - not just for baby boomers, but for anyone struggling in this perpetually messy world. Joel told biographer Fred Schruers: "What does the song really mean? Is it an apologia for the baby boomers? No, it's not. It's just a song that says the world's a mess. It's always been a mess, it's always going to be a mess." An early example of the rapid lyrics style is the 1974 hit "Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me)" by the short-lived group Reunion. It was also used by R.E.M. in "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." Before that, Bob Dylan did something similar on "Subterranean Homesick Blues." Joel wrote the lyrics first, which he rarely does. He says that is why the song has no melody. Joel told Billboard magazine: "It's terrible musically. It's like a mosquito buzzing around your head." This is a very popular song, and although Joel doesn't consider it one of his favorites and admits it has no melody, he explained on The Howard Stern Show that he doesn't hate the song. He does, however, have a hard time remembering all the words when he performs it in concert and has even looked to audience members mouthing the words to the song to pick up the lyrics. He is often asked if he is going to write a sequel with updated lyrics, but he has no plans to. This was Joel's third US #1 hit. His previous two were "It's Still Rock And Roll To Me" and "Tell Her About It." "The River Of Dreams" hit #1 six years later. Report this ad Blender magazine rated this the 41st worst song ever in its 2004 article "Run for Your Life! It's the 50 Worst Songs Ever!" Comparing it to "a term paper scribbled the night before it's due," Blender criticized Joel's attempt to "Fit a cultural history of the twentieth century into 4 minutes" (even though the song is closer to 5 minutes, clocking in at 4:47), as well as accusing him of trivializing the Tiananmen Square massacre by mentioning it in the same line as "Rock and roller cola wars." Joel is accustomed to being panned by critics, who were often very harsh on his hit songs. Historical figures (therefore not including Ben-Hur and Peter Pan) mentioned by name in the song: Harry Truman, Doris Day, Johnnie Ray, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio, Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Marilyn Monroe, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Sugar Ray Robinson, Marlon Brando, Dwight Eisenhower, Marciano, Liberace, Santayana, Josef Stalin, Georgi Malenkov, Gemal Nasser, Sergei Prokofiev, Nelson Rockefeller, Roy Campanella, Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Arturo Toscanini, Albert Einstein, James Dean, Davy Crockett, Elvis Presley, Brigitte Bardot, Nikita Krushchev, Grace Kelly, Boris Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Queen Elizabeth II ("England's got a new queen"), Jack Kerouac, Chou En-Lai, Charles de Gaulle, Buddy Holly, Charles Starkweather, Fidel Castro, Syngman Rhee, John F. Kennedy, Chubby Checker, Ernest Hemingway, Karl Adolf Eichmann, Bob Dylan, Lawrence Thomas Edward (of Arabia), Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn, Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, Giovanni Montini (Pope Paul VI), Malcolm Little (X), Ho Chi Minh, Menachem Begin, Ronald Reagan, Sally Ride, and Bernie Goetz. Until the final stanza, every two lines represents a year; the song opens in 1949, the year Billy Joel was born. When Joel sings about the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho, the music imitates the "screeching violins" the film was famous for. >> In Rolling Stone, Joel said this was, "Essentially a novelty song." This is inline with his distaste for many of his hit songs - he prefers the tracks that don't get airplay. This song was parodied on The Simpsons season finale where they "roasted" Homer. The song consists of reminding viewers of past plots. It was sung by Dan Castellaneta (The voice of Homer). >> Not long after "We Didn't Start The Fire" was released, the fifth grade class at the Banta Elementary School in Menasha, Wisconsin used the lyrics of the song to select topics for their history reports. On January 26, 1990, Joel's record label responded by issuing cassettes containing the song and a 10-minute talk by Joel to 40,000 students. In The Office episode "The Fire" (2005), Dwight and Michael sing this as "Ryan started the fire," after Ryan accidentally causes a fire in the office kitchen. The song was reignited on Twitter in the late hours of March 11, 2020 when TV writer Matt Warburton tweeted: "Today was like if 'We Didn't Start The Fire' was a day." It was a particularly eventful day: The World Health Organization officially announced COVID-19 as a pandemic, the Dow Jones stock market continued to plummet, disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison, actors Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson both contracted the coronavirus in Australia, the NBA suspended the rest of its season due to a Utah Jazz player testing positive, and President Trump gave a primetime address to the nation regarding the pandemic. In response to Warburton's tweet, the Twitterverse lit up with users turning the day's events into Joel-like lyrics. Minnesota-based therapist Brittany Barkholtz (aka The Caffeinated Therapist) came up with one of the most popular verses, which was retweeted more than 68,000 times within two days: Schools close, Tom Hanks, trouble in the big banks, no vaccine, quarantine, no more toilet paper seen Travel ban, Weinstein, panic COVID-19, NBA, gone away, what else do I have to sayyyyyy This also inspired several other online parodies set to Joel's song. Here are a few of the popular ones: In 2003, Cornell University's a cappella group Cayuga's Waiters released a version called "We Didn't Go To Harvard" that was built on references to life on Cornell's campus. In 2007, YouTuber Mikey Squirrel released a parody video detailing the history of the Star Wars universe called "We Didn't Start The Star Wars." In 2010, the YouTube comedy channel PopeFriction rattled off videogame history in "Wii Didn't Start The Fire." That same year, YouTube musician Adam Drucker chronicled 5,000 years of Jewish history in "We've Got A Strong Desire" (a cover of the 1993 song by Lenny Solomon and Shlock Rock). In 2013, Annoying Orange creator Dane Boedigheimer produced "We Didn't Start The Viral" for YouTube's Comedy Week. In 2013, the Los Angeles-based pop band Milo Greene performed this on the A.V. Club's A.V. Undercover series. The cast of The Avengers: Endgame sang a Marvel Cinematic Universe-themed parody on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in 2019. In 2021, this inspired a weekly podcast called We Didn't Start The Fire, which features hosts Katie Puckrik and Tom Fordyce examining the historical significance of the subjects mentioned in the song. In the Amazon Prime superhero series The Boys, Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) is a big fan of Billy Joel's. In the season two episode "Nothing Like It In The World," he and Annie (Erin Moriarty) sing along with "We Didn't Start The Fire" when it comes on the car radio during a road trip. This was also used in these TV shows: Veep ("Veep" - 2019) The Goldbergs ("We Didn't Start The Fire" - 2017) The Last Man On Earth ("Skidmark" - 2016) Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt ("Kimmy Goes To School!" - 2015) Parks And Recreation ("Leslie And Ron" - 2015) The Cleveland Show ("Of Lice & Men" - 2013) Family Guy ("Bigfat" - 2013) Two And A Half Men ("The Immortal Mr. Billy Joel" - 2010) 30 Rock ("Subway Hero" - 2008) And in these movies: Freaks Of Nature (2015) The Five-Year Engagement (2012) Storm Front was nominated for five Grammy Awards, with three of the nominations - Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, Song Of The Year, and Record Of The Year -going to this tune at the 1990 ceremony. That year, the big winner was " The Wind Beneath My Wings" by Bette Midler (Michael Bolton took the male pop vocal prize with "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You"). Fall Out Boy released an updated version on June 28, 2023. Their take on "We Didn't Start the Fire" brings a modern twist, replacing the original lyrics with standout events from the period following the song's original release in 1989 up to 2023. Unlike Billy Joel's chronological approach, FOB's remake throws time out the window and mixes everything up without any concern for the order of events.
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye" Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock" Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac Sputnik, Zhou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai" Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball Starkweather homicide, children of Thalidomide Oh, huh, ho Buddy Holly, "Ben-Hur", space monkey, Mafia Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land" Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion "Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say? We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline Ayatollahs in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan "Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law Rock and roller Cola wars, I can't take it anymore We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire But when we are gone It will still burn on, and on, and on And on and on and on and on and on and on We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it We didn't start the fire
| Week | Chart Date | Position | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oct 14, 1989 | 58 | 68 |
| 2 | Oct 21, 1989 | 40 | 86 |
| 3 | Oct 28, 1989 | 28 | 98 |
| 4 | Nov 4, 1989 | 21 | 105 |
| 5 | Nov 11, 1989 | 13 | 113 |
| 6 | Nov 18, 1989 | 6 | 120 |
| 7 | Nov 25, 1989 | 5 | 121 |
| 8 | Dec 2, 1989 | 2 | 124 |
| 9 | Dec 9, 1989 | 1 | 125 |
| 10 | Dec 16, 1989 | 1 | 125 |
| 11 | Dec 23, 1989 | 3 | 123 |
| 12 | Dec 30, 1989 | 3 | 123 |
| 13 | Jan 6, 1990 | 9 | 117 |
| 14 | Jan 13, 1990 | 16 | 110 |
| 15 | Jan 20, 1990 | 27 | 99 |
| 16 | Jan 27, 1990 | 38 | 88 |
| 17 | Feb 3, 1990 | 50 | 76 |
| 18 | Feb 10, 1990 | 69 | 57 |
| 19 | Feb 17, 1990 | 94 | 32 |