In 1989, Billy Joel released his eleventh album Storm Front which featured his third single that would reach number one on the Billboard Top 100 charts, We Didn’t Start the Fire. We Didn’t Start the Fire was a unique tune in which the lyrics were composed entirely of a laundry list of subjects that dominated news headlines spanning from 1949 to 1989 (which was also Billy Joel’s lifetime at that point). The pop culture hit would address topics such as Beatlemania, the Berlin wall, the Ayatollah, Ho Chi Minh, Catcher in the Rye, The King and I, the crack epidemic and much more.
The song would spawn parodies for use in movies and TV, but there hasn’t been a genuine updated cover until now. The band Fall Out Boy has just released their version with headlines from the last thirty years filling out the lyrics. This single will reportedly be pressed into a limited edition vinyl record which can be found on the band’s online merchandise store. The cover picks up from where the original left off from 1989 and covers a plethora of topics all the way to today. Which include movie references like Robert Downey Jr. and Iron Man as well as Michael Keaton’s Batman, who made his debut in 1989.
CBR.com has posted the lyrics for all to follow along with the song:
Captain Planet, Arab Spring, LA Riots Rodney King, Deep fakes, Earthquakes, Iceland volcano, Oklahoma City bomb, Kurt Cobain, Pokémon, Tiger Woods, MySpace, Monsanto GMOs
Harry Potter, Twilight, Michael Jackson dies, Nuclear accident Fukushima Japan, Crimean peninsula, Cambridge analytica, Kim Jong Un, Robert Downey Jr Iron Man
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’re trying to fight it
More war in Afghanistan, Cubs go all the way again, Obama, Spielberg, Explosion Lebanon, Unabomber, Bobbit, John, Bombing Boston marathon, Balloon Boy, War on terror, Qanon
Trump gets impeached twice, Polar bears got no ice, Fyre fest, Black Parade, Michael Phelps, Y2K, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Stranger Things, Tiger King, Ever given suez
Sandy Hook, Columbine, Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice, ISIS, Lebron James, Shinzo Abe blown away, Meghan Markle, George Floyd, Burj Khalifa, Metroid, Fermi paradox, Venus and Serena, Michael Jordan 23, YouTube killed MTV, Spongebob, Golden State Killer caught, Michael Jordan 45, Woodstock ’99, Keaton Batman, Bush v Gore, 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, No we didn’t light it but we’re trying to fight it
Elon Musk, Kaepernick, Texas failed electric grid, Jeff Bezos, Climate change, White rhino goes extinct, Great pacific garbage patch, Tom DeLonge and aliens, Mars rover, Avatar, Self-driving electric cars, S-S-S-R-Is, Prince and the Queen die, World Trade, Second plane, 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, But when we are gone, It will still burn 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