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And Finally Artist News Releases
Fall Out Boy have updated Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start The Fire for some reason
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 29 June 2023
Fall Out Boy have released an updated version of Billy Joel’s song ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ in order to, I don’t know, highlight how lists are still a thing, or something.
Joel’s original song was released as a single in 1989 and listed 118 people and events from politics, culture, science and sport that had proven notable between 1949, the year when Joel was born, and the year of the track’s release.
So, your first verse goes like this: “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”.
Anyway, it’s now 34 years since Joel released the song. So, to mark this, erm, milestone, Fall Out Boy have recorded a new version, listing significant things that have happened since 1989. Things like what?
Well, now the first verse goes like this: “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”.
Aren’t lists fun! And such a good way of making it look like you’ve made a good point about something, when all you’ve really done is compile a list. Not even a chronological list in Fall Out Boy’s case – whereas Joel at least got most of his list in the right order. What was the motivation for this update though?
A statement accompanying the new track reads: “I thought about this song a lot when I was younger. All these important people and events – some that disappeared into the sands of time, others that changed the world forever. So much has happened in the span of the last 34 years, we felt like a little system update might be fun. Hope you like our take on it”.
There you go, it might be fun. Is it? Well, that’s for you to decide. And if you decide incorrectly, you can buy the track on limited edition seven-inch now.
