We Didn't Start the Fire

"We Didn't Start the Fire"
Song
B-side	"House of Blue Light"

"We Didn't Start the Fire" is a song by Billy Joel. Its lyrics are made up from rapid-fire brief allusions to over a hundred headline events between March 1949 (Joel was born on May 9 of that year) and 1989, when the song was released on his album Storm Front. The song was a number-one hit in the US, and often parodied since.

The song and music video have been interpreted as a rebuttal to criticism of Joel's Baby Boomer generation. The song's title and refrain mention "the fire", an allusion to conflict and societal turmoil; Joel asserts that these can't be blamed on his generation alone - "we didn't start the fire, it was always burning since the world's been turning".

History

Joel has said, "I'm a history nut. I devour history books. At one time I wanted to be a history teacher." According to his mother, he was a bookworm by the age of seven. Unlike most of Joel's songs, the lyrics were written before the melody, owing to the somewhat unusual style of the song. The song was a huge commercial success and was Joel's third Billboard No. 1 hit. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year.

I had turned forty. It was 1989 and I said "Okay, what's happened in my life?" I wrote down the year 1949. Okay, Harry Truman was president. Popular singer of the day, Doris Day. China went Communist. Another popular singer, Johnnie Ray. Big Broadway show, South Pacific. Journalist, Walter Winchell. Athlete, Joe DiMaggio. Then I went on to 1950 [...]. It's one of the worst melodies I've ever written. I kind of like the lyric though.

Blender magazine ranked "We Didn't Start the Fire" No. 41 on its list of the "50 Worst Songs Ever", a list that also includes songs from Paul McCartney and Simon & Garfunkel. They considered the production bombastic and stated that the song "resembles a term paper scribbled the night before it’s due."

Joel has mixed feelings about the song. "It's a nightmare to perform live, because if I miss one word, it's a train wreck." He has also called it a "novelty song" that doesn't "really define me as well as album songs that probably don't get played." The song was parodied in an episode of the U.S. version of The Office.

Music video

A music video for the single was directed by Chris Blum, which chronicles a middle-class married couple and their goal of the American Dream: a home, careers and children. This is symbolised by the constant revamping of a domestic kitchen - 40s utilitarian turning into 50s Populuxe, 60s op art into 70s earth-colored tiles and macramé, and finally 80s black lacquer & granite bench tops. This is juxtaposed with the tumultuous social times of the second half of the 20th century (e.g., bra burning and draft card burning). The singer acts as an omnipresent observer. During each chorus, Joel beats on a table while, in the background, famous photographs (of Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination and Nguyễn Văn Lém's execution, among others) are consumed by fire.

Historical items referred to in the song

Though the lyrics are rapid-fire with several people and events mentioned in a single word each, there is widespread agreement on the meaning of the lyric. Steven Ettinger wrote,

Billy Joel captured the major images, events, and personalities of this half-century in a three-minute song.... It was pure information overload, a song that assumed we knew exactly what he was singing about...What was truly alarming was the realization that we, the listeners, for the most part understood the references.

The following events are in the order that they appear in the song, which is, with two possible exceptions, chronological. The lyric for each individual event is brief and the events are punctuated by the chorus and other lyrical elements. The following list includes longer, more descriptive names for clarity. 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. There are 119 items listed in the song.

1940s

1949

• Harry Truman is inaugurated as U.S. president after being elected in 1948 to his own term; previously he was sworn in following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He authorized the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan during World War II, on August 6 and August 9, 1945, respectively.
• Doris Day enters the public spotlight with the films My Dream Is Yours and It's a Great Feeling as well as popular songs like "It's Magic"; divorces her second husband.
• Red China as the Communist Party of China wins the Chinese Civil War, establishing the People's Republic of China.
• Johnnie Ray signs his first recording contract with Okeh Records, although he would not become popular for another two years.
• South Pacific, the prize-winning musical, opens on Broadway on April 7.
• Walter Winchell is an aggressive radio and newspaper journalist credited with inventing the gossip column.
• Joe DiMaggio and the New York Yankees go to the World Series five times in the 1940s, winning four of them.

1950s

1950

• Joe McCarthy, the US Senator, gains national attention and begins his anti-communist crusade with his Lincoln Day speech.
• Richard Nixon is first elected to the United States Senate.
• Studebaker, a popular car company, begins its financial downfall.
• Television is becoming widespread (in black and white format) and becomes the most popular means of advertising.
• North Korea and South Korea declare war after Northern forces stream south on June 25.
• Marilyn Monroe soars in popularity with five new movies, including The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, and attempts suicide after the death of friend Johnny Hyde who asked to marry her several times, but she refused respectfully . Monroe would later (1954) be married for a brief time to Joe DiMaggio (mentioned in the previous verse).

1951

• The Rosenbergs, Ethel and Julius, were convicted on March 29 for espionage.
• H-Bomb is in the middle of its development as a nuclear weapon, announced in early 1950 and first tested in late 1952.
• Sugar Ray Robinson, a champion welterweight boxer.
• Panmunjom, the border village in Korea, is the location of truce talks between the parties of the Korean War.
• Marlon Brando is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire.
• The King and I, musical, opens on Broadway on March 29.
• The Catcher in the Rye, a controversial novel by J. D. Salinger, is published.

1952

• Dwight D. Eisenhower is first elected as U.S. president, winning by a landslide margin of 442 to 89 electoral votes.
• The vaccine for polio is privately tested by Jonas Salk.
• England's got a new queen: Queen Elizabeth II succeeds to the throne of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Realms upon the death of George VI of the United Kingdom and is crowned the next year.
• Rocky Marciano defeats Jersey Joe Walcott, becoming the world Heavyweight champion.
• Liberace has a popular 1950s television show for his musical entertainment.
• Santayana goodbye: George Santayana, philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist, dies on September 26.

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 and his wife Barbara are involved in a highly publicized divorce, culminating in 1954 with a record-breaking $5.5 million settlement.
• 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. Probably a reference to the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.

1954

• Roy Cohn resigns as Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel and enters private practice with the fall of McCarthy.
• Juan Perón spends his last full year as President of Argentina before a September 1955 coup.
• Arturo Toscanini is at the height of his fame as a conductor, performing regularly with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on national radio.
• Dacron is an early artificial fiber made from the same plastic as polyester.
• Dien Bien Phu falls. A village in North Vietnam falls to Viet Minh forces under Vo Nguyen Giap, leading to the creation of North Vietnam and South Vietnam as separate states.
• "Rock Around the Clock" is a hit single released by Bill Haley & His Comets in May, spurring worldwide interest in rock and roll music.

1955

• Albert Einstein dies on April 18 at the age of 76.
• James Dean achieves success with East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, gets nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and dies in a car accident on September 30 at the age of 23.
• Brooklyn's got a winning team as the Brooklyn Dodgers win the World Series for the only time before their move to Los Angeles.
• Davy Crockett is a Disney television series about the legendary frontiersman of the same name. The show was a huge hit with young boys and inspired a short-lived "coonskin cap" craze.
• Peter Pan is broadcast on TV live and in color from the 1954 version of the stage musical starring Mary Martin on March 7. Disney released an animated version the previous year.
• Elvis Presley signs with RCA Records on November 21, beginning his pop career.
• Disneyland opens on July 17 as Walt Disney's first theme park.

1956

• Brigitte Bardot appears in her first mainstream film And God Created Woman and establishes an international reputation as a French "sex kitten".
• Budapest is the site of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
• Alabama is the site of the Montgomery Bus Boycott which ultimately led to the removal of the last race laws in the USA. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr figure prominently.
• Nikita Khrushchev makes his famous Secret Speech denouncing Stalin's "cult of personality" on February 23.
• Princess Grace Kelly releases her last film, High Society, and marries Prince Rainier III of Monaco.
• Peyton Place, the best-selling novel by Grace Metalious, is published. Though mild compared to today's prime time, it shocked the reserved values of the '50s.
• Trouble in the Suez: The Suez Crisis boils as Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal on October 29.

1957

• Little Rock, Arkansas is the site of an anti-integration standoff, as Governor Orval Faubus stops the Little Rock Nine from attending Little Rock Central High School and President Dwight D. Eisenhower deploys the 101st Airborne Division to counteract him.
• Boris Pasternak, the Russian author, publishes his famous novel Doctor Zhivago.
• Mickey Mantle is in the middle of his career as a famous New York Yankees outfielder and American League All-Star for the sixth year in a row.
• Jack Kerouac publishes his first novel in seven years, On the Road.
• Sputnik becomes the first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, marking the start of the space race.
• Chou En-Lai, Premier of the People's Republic of China, survives an assassination attempt on the charter airliner Kashmir Princess.
• Bridge on the River Kwai is released as a film adaptation of the 1954 novel and receives seven Academy Awards.

1958

• Lebanon is engulfed in a political and religious crisis that eventually involves U.S. intervention.
• Charles de Gaulle is elected first president of the French Fifth Republic following the Algerian Crisis.
• California baseball begins as the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants move to California and become the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants. They are the first major league teams west of Kansas City.
• Charles Starkweather homicides capture the attention of Americans, killing eleven people before he is caught in a massive manhunt in Douglas, Wyoming.
• Children of Thalidomide: Mothers taking the drug Thalidomide had children born with congenital birth defects caused by the sleeping aid and antiemetic, which was also used at times to treat morning sickness.

1959

• Buddy Holly dies in a plane crash on February 3 with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper, in a day that had a devastating impact on the country and youth culture.
• Ben-Hur, a film based around the New Testament starring Charlton Heston, wins eleven Academy Awards.
• Space Monkey: Able and Miss Baker 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 is a no-go: Production of this car marque ends after only three years due to poor sales.

1960s

1960

• U-2: An American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union, causing the U-2 Crisis of 1960.
• Syngman Rhee was rescued by the CIA after being forced to resign as leader of South Korea for allegedly fixing an election and embezzling more than twenty million U.S. dollars.
• Payola, illegal payments for radio broadcasting of songs, was publicized due to Dick Clark's testimony before Congress and Alan Freed's public disgrace.
• John F. Kennedy beats Richard Nixon in the November 8 general election.
• Chubby Checker popularizes the dance The Twist with his song of the same name.
• Psycho: An Alfred Hitchcock thriller, based on a pulp novel by Robert Bloch and adapted by Joseph Stefano, which becomes a landmark in graphic violence and cinema sensationalism. The screeching violins heard briefly in the background of the song are a trademark of the film's soundtrack.
• Belgians in the Congo: The Democratic Republic of the Congo was declared independent of Belgium on June 30, with Joseph Kasavubu as President and Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister.

1961

• Ernest Hemingway commits suicide on July 2 after a long battle with depression.
• Adolf Eichmann, a "most wanted" Nazi war criminal, is traced to Argentina and captured by Mossad agents. He is covertly taken to Israel where he is put on trial for crimes against humanity in Germany during World War II, convicted, and hanged.
• Stranger in a Strange Land: Written by Robert A. Heinlein, is a breakthrough best-seller with themes of sexual freedom and liberation.
• Bob Dylan: After a New York Times review by critic Robert Shelton, Bob Dylan is signed to Columbia Records.
• Berlin: The Berlin Wall, which forcibly separated West Berlin from East Berlin and the rest of East Germany, was erected on August 13 to prevent citizens escaping to the West.
• Bay of Pigs Invasion: Failed attempt by United States-trained Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro.

1962

• Lawrence of Arabia: The Academy Award-winning film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence starring Peter O'Toole premiers in America on December 16.
• British Beatlemania: The Beatles, a British rock group, gain Ringo Starr as drummer and Brian Epstein as manager, and join the EMI's Parlophone label. They soon become the world's most famous rock band , with the word "Beatlemania" adopted by the press for their fans' unprecedented enthusiasm. It also began the British Invasion in the United States.
• Ole' Miss: James Meredith integrates the University of Mississippi
• John Glenn: Flew the first American manned orbital mission termed "Friendship 7" on February 20.
• Liston beats Patterson: Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson fight for the world heavyweight championship on September 25, ending in a first-round knockout. This match marked the first time Patterson had ever been knocked out and one of only eight losses in his 20-year professional career.

1963

• Pope Paul VI: Cardinal Giovanni Montini is elected to the papacy and takes the regnal name of Paul VI.
• Malcolm X makes his infamous statement "The chickens have come home to roost" about the Kennedy assassination, thus causing the Nation of Islam to censor him.
• British politician sex: 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.
• JFK, blown away! What else do I have to say?: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22 while riding in an open convertible through Dallas.

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 2 Operation Rolling Thunder begins bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply line from North Vietnam to the Vietcong rebels in the south. On March 8, the first U.S. combat troops, 3,500 marines, land in South Vietnam.

1968

• Richard Nixon back again: Former Vice President Nixon is elected in the 1968 presidential election of the United States

1969

• Moonshot, the first manned lunar landing, successfully lands on the moon.
• Woodstock: Famous rock and roll festival of 1969 that came to be the epitome of the counterculture movement.

1970s

1974

• Watergate: Political scandal that began when the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC was broken into. After the break-in, word began to spread that President Richard Nixon (a Republican) may have known about the break-in, and tried to cover it up. The scandal would ultimately result in the resignation of President Nixon, and to date, this remains the only time that anyone has ever resigned the US Presidency.
• Punk rock: The Ramones form, with the Sex Pistols following in 1975, bringing in the punk era.

1977

(Note that these two items, while later chronologically than the two 1976 items, come immediately before them in the song.)

• Menachem Begin becomes Prime Minister of Israel in 1977 and negotiates the Camp David Accords with Egypt's president in 1978.
• Ronald Reagan: President of the United States from 1981 to 1989; first attempted in 1976 to run for president.

1976

(Note that these two items, while earlier chronologically than the two 1977 items, come immediately after them in the song)

• Palestine: a United Nations resolution that calls for an independent Palestinian state and to end the Israeli occupation.
• Terror on the airline: Numerous aircraft hijackings took place, specifically, the Palestinian hijack of Air France Flight 139 and the subsequent Operation Entebbe in Uganda.

1979

• Ayatollah's in Iran: During the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the West-backed and U.S.-installed Shah is overthrown as the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gains power after years in exile.
• Russians in Afghanistan: Following their move into Afghanistan, Soviet forces fight a ten-year war, from 1979 to 1989.

1980s

1983

• Wheel of Fortune: A hit television game show which has been TV's highest-rated syndicated program since 1983.
• Sally Ride: In 1983 she becomes the first American woman in space. Dr. Ride's quip from space "Better than an E-ticket", harkens back to the opening of Disneyland mentioned earlier, with the E-ticket purchase needed for the best rides.
• Heavy metal suicide: In the 1980s Ozzy Osbourne and the bands Metallica and Judas Priest were brought to court by parents who accused the musicians of hiding subliminal pro-suicide messages in their music.
• Foreign debts: Persistent U.S. trade deficits
• Homeless vets: Veterans of the Vietnam War, including many disabled ex-military, are reported to be left homeless and impoverished, the country unable to yet handle its failure to succeed.
• AIDS: A collection of symptoms and infections in humans resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is first detected and recognized in the 1980s, and was on its way to becoming a pandemic.
• Crack was a popular drug in the mid-to-late 1980s.

1984

• Bernie Goetz: On December 22, Goetz shot four young men who he said were threatening him on a New York City subway. Goetz was charged with attempted murder but was acquitted of the charges, though convicted of carrying an unlicensed gun.

1988

• Hypodermics on the shore: Medical waste was found washed up on beaches in New Jersey after being illegally dumped at sea. Before this event, waste dumped in the oceans was an "out of sight, out of mind" affair. This has been cited as one of the crucial turning points in popular opinion on environmentalism

1989

• China's under martial law: On May 20, China declares martial law, enabling them to use force of arms against protesting students to end the Tiananmen Square protests.
• Rock-and-roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore!: Soft drink giants Coke and Pepsi each run marketing campaigns using rock & roll and popular music stars to reach the young adult demographic.

Of the 56 individuals mentioned by name in the song, the following nine are still alive as of November 2011: Queen Elizabeth II, Brigitte Bardot, Fidel Castro, Chubby Checker, Bob Dylan, John Glenn, Doris Day, Sally Ride, and Bernhard Goetz.

Johnnie Ray, Joe DiMaggio, Richard Nixon, Roy Campanella, Mickey Mantle, Floyd Patterson, Marlon Brando, Menachem Begin, Ronald Reagan and J. D. Salinger were all alive when the song was released but have died since.

Two individuals, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, are mentioned by name twice in the song.

The U.S. Presidents in office from 1949 to 1989 not mentioned in the song are Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush.

The Dodgers are mentioned twice, but only in reference to their homes rather than by name: "Brooklyn's got a winning team", concerning their 1955 World Series victory, and "California baseball" about the Dodgers' and Giants' move from New York to California in 1958.

Derivations

Numerous parodies and takeoffs have been based on the song, including The Simpsons parody "They'll Never Stop the Simpsons" at the end of the 2002 Gump Roast episode, and San Francisco a cappella group 'The Richter Scales' 2007 Webby Award-winning parody "Here Comes Another Bubble." A version called 'We Love Barney Fife', recorded by the band Guns 'n' Moses, was played frequently on the Doctor Demento radio show.

Charts

Peak positions

Chart (1989)	Peak position
Australian Singles Chart	2
Austrian Singles Chart	7
Canada RPM Top Singles	2
Dutch Top 40	11
German Media Control Charts	4
Irish Singles Chart	3
New Zealand Singles Chart	5
UK Singles Chart	7
U.S. Billboard Hot 100	1
U.S. Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks	5
U.S. Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks	6

Year-end charts

Chart (1990)	Position
Australian Singles Chart	37
U.S. Billboard Hot 100	35
Canada RPM Top Singles	77

References

Sources

• Bordowitz, Hank (2006). Billy Joel: The Life & Times of an Angry Young Man. Billboard Books. p. 272. ISBN 978-0-8230-8248-3.*

External links

• "We Didn't Start the Fire" Music Video on YouTube / ⒞1989 Sony BMG channel
• "We Didn't Start the Fire" Music Video on YouTube / BillyJoelVEVO channel