Song #709: "We Didn't Start The Fire" by Billy Joel

Date: Dec 9, 1989
Weeks: 2

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So this is basically a list of historical events that influenced Billy Joel when he was growing up. I've always been of two minds about this song and its lyrical content. On the one hand, it's a great tool for learning about U.S. history from the 1950s through the 1980s. The recent past often gets overlooked when trying to teach kids history, I think generally because adults consider anything that happened within their lifetimes as current events. I know there's a lot in this song I probably never would have learned about otherwise.

On the other hand, I've always been a bit bothered by the somewhat self-indulgent specificity of the era being covered. I'm not sure the sex scandal referenced by the line "British politician sex" is a major historical event that needs to be documented for future generations. It's also always bugged me that the lyrics spend 4 verses carefully documenting every event from 1949 to 1963, but then it covers 1964 to 1989 in a single verse. In that sense, it feels like the song is largely playing to people who are exactly the same age as Billy Joel. Or people who are the children of those people who at least consider this "the history that happened before I was old enough to pay attention to current events." I wonder how well this song will be regarded in 20 years.

So that's my ambivalence about the content of the lyrics. In terms of the construction of the lyrics, I'm impressed. Billy Joel plays fast and loose with the rhyme scheme and meter, but it never really feels like he's cheating. Wikipedia also insists that the events in the song are listed in chronological order, at least by year. That would seem to add an extra layer to the challenge of writing a song like this, so I'm kind of impressed that he managed to construct a song under all those constraints.

As for the chorus, I'm glad to see that Wikipedia echoes the interpretation of the song I've always held. That idea is that Billy Joel doesn't want his generation, the Baby Boomers, blamed for all the world's problems, because they inherited problems from the generation before. The song concludes with the implication that the world's problems will continue after his generation is gone. And yet it's not a bleak song, it's actually hopeful. The message is that the world has survived turmoil before, and it will survive whatever comes next.

The music is a lot of fun, but maintains a sort of frantically serious tone. The synthesizer keyboards are put to good use, creating a dramatic melody during the chorus that is probably the most memorable part of the music in this song. They are bold in a song that demands bold music. The bongos during the chorus also maintain the verses' frantic energy through the chorus. During the verses, there is an appealing guitar rhythm that sounds sort of like a 1950s classic rock rhythm. It's very basic and does a great job holding the song together. I also like the gradually accelerating feeling of chaos that is represented in both the guitars and the vocals. It symbolizes Billy Joel's increasing inability to understand and cope with the world's chaos and strife, and the universal feeling that the world's problems just keep getting worse and spinning out of control. And yet ultimately I still feel the song is about keeping those problems in perspective. The music really does a good job capturing all that frantic energy and turmoil.

I'm less certain about the use of occasional audio clips mixed throughout. There's a cheer for the line "Brooklyn has a winning team," and the music from Psycho plays when he references that movie. It seems a little silly to interject audio for those two things. On the other hand, the song is quite long, if not in runtime then in lyrical quantity, and those bits of audio do manage to inject some variety into the song at certain moments. Ultimately I think they are subtle but effective enhancements, rather than detractions.

My verdict: Like it. It's a fun, energetic song, and it's good for teaching history. If nothing else, its existence and popularity will keep the people and events referred to in the lyrics in the cultural consciousness longer than they might otherwise have been.