We Didn't Start the Fire - Bill Joel

Joel explained that he wrote this song due to his interest in history. He commented that he would have wanted to be a history teacher if he had not become a musician. 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".[1] "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.

This song could be classified as a patter song characterized by its moderately fast tempo with rapid succession of rhythmic lyrics. - http://wikipedia.org



"We Didn't Start the Fire" Lyrics

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

CHORUS
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 aand Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc

Roy Con, 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

CHORUS

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"

Lebanon, Charlse de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide

Buddy Holly, "Ben Hur", space monkey, Mafia
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go

U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo

CHORUS

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

CHORUS

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollah's 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

CHORUS

We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on...

Released: November 10, 1989
Album: Storm Front
Format: 7" single, 12" single, CD
Genre: Rock
Length: 4:49
Label: Columbia Records
Writer(s): Billy Joel
Producer: Mick Jones, Billy Joel