Harry Truman wins the 1948 United States presidential election following a partial term after the death of Franklin D.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. The following list includes longer, more descriptive names for clarity. The lyric for each individual event is brief and the events are punctuated by the chorus and other lyrical elements. The following events (with Joel's lyric for each appearing in bold) are listed in the order that they appear in the song, which is almost entirely chronological. 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. Steven Ettinger wrote,īilly Joel captured the major images, events, and personalities of this half-century in a three-minute song. Though the lyrics are rapid-fire with several people and events mentioned in each stanza, there is widespread agreement on the meaning of the lyrics.

Problems playing this file? See media help. He was asked if he could do a follow-up about the next couple of years after the events that transpired in the original song, he commented 'No, I wrote one song already and I don't think it was really that good to begin with, melodically.' Historical events referenced When asked if he deliberately intended to chronicle the Cold War with his song he responded, 'It was just my luck that the Soviet Union decided to close down shop ', and that this span 'had a symmetry to it, it was 40 years' that he had lived through. If you take the melody by itself, terrible. In 1993, when discussing it with documentary filmmaker David Horn, Joel compared its melodic content unfavorably to his song ' The Longest Time': 'Take a song like 'We Didn't Start the Fire.' It's really not much of a song . Joel has also criticized the song on strictly musical grounds. Joel retorted, 'Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?' Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for the song. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties'. He was in a recording studio and met a 21-year-old friend of Sean Lennon who said 'It's a terrible time to be 21!' Joel replied to him, 'Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful.' The friend replied, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. 'We Didn't Start the Fire', particularly in the 21st century, has become the basis of many pop culture parodies, and continues to be repurposed in various television shows, advertisements, and comedic productions.īilly Joel conceived the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. Storm Front became Joel's third album to reach number one in the United States.

The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became Joel's third single to reach number one on the United States Billboard Hot 100 in late 1989. A list song, its fast-paced lyrics include brief references to 118 significant political, cultural, scientific, and sporting events between 1949, the year of Joel's birth, and 1989, in a mainly chronological order. The song was released as a single on September 18, 1989, and later released as part of Joel's album Storm Front on October 17, 1989. ' We Didn't Start the Fire' is a song written and published by American musician Billy Joel.

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