We Didn't Start The Fire

i wish this song were called "Moments in Time"

What if this had been one of those songs like "The Horse" by Cliff Nobles where the instrumental was more famous than the side with the lyrics.

People would hear it at a football game and go, "Ever hear the version with the lyrics? It's really weird."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g04jLd1b_mo

I know like a thousand times more about the history and culture of the 20th Century than I did when this song came out and I still don't understand like a quarter (maybe even a third) of these lyrics.

THANK YOU. Its so wild that "cola wars" is what makes Billy Joel upend that table in the music video https://t.co/6kKkPQxq1w

— 🍓 Camellia-Berry Grass 🍓 (@theCBGrass) June 18, 2021

I’m sure he wrote it that way on purpose – it ends the rant on a note of irony/satire. Try ending it with a different line (e.g., “Hypodermics on the shore”); it sort of falls flat.

lol, i can remember some talking head on "I Love The 80s" making basically the same observation back in 2002. but maybe this points the way towards the best way of sequelizing/updating WDSTF: start with rock-n-roller cola wars, and go up to "I Love the 80s."

Betty Crocker
Ministry
At Toys 'R' Us, a shopping spree
Nipsy Russell
Mr. Whipple
Tootsie Roll Pop
Spaceballs
Madballs
Hot Sam's in every shopping mall
Daisy Fuentes
Crazytown
Gino Vanelli wants to stop

Can anyone tell me what Prokofiev did to be included in this litany of touchstones?

Wikipedia obliges:

Sergei Prokofiev, a popular Russian composer, dies.

Now tell me what baseball did

Did it start a fire

i think "california baseball" refers to some teams moving to california. pretty flimsy/minor imo.

I think Billy is talking about the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants moving to California. For a New York guy, that might have been epochal. (Honestly never clicked for me that for a span, New York had *three* baseball teams!)

Wouldn't it be funny if, after he dies, it's revealed that Billy Joel *did* start the fire, and the song was just mischievous misdirection?

The list of Billy's accomplices remains incomplete, but I for one am shocked by his willingness to involve Keith Flint, then still a minor, in such matters as terror on the airlines and "Wheel of Fortune."

Also, young Drew Barrymore.

Gavin Rossdale admitted his involvement in a Razorblade Suitcase deep cut.

this song would have been better if Billy Joel had just listed all of the people that had aggrieved him in his life

isn't that everyone who isn't billy joel

Tuna salad
Ham on rye
With a pickle on the side
Patty melt
BLT
Cantaloupe and cottage cheese
Meatloaf
Open-faced
Corned beef, if you like the taste
Your choice of salad,
Soup or fries
And a beverage of any size

We're eating at a diner
Oh, we've heard such good things
From Estelle and Irving

Eat your heart out Weird Albert

I think lines like “California baseball” and “Wheel of Fortune” are good, b/c it gives you a sense of the 20th Century piling up, and creates a whiplash btw the historic and the banal (and he ends on the banal: cola wars).

Don’t know why I’m playing mr. save-a-fire this weekend, lol.

You’re so right, though, that having it build to banal “cola wars” instead of “needles on the shore” makes it a pop song.

"British politician sex" sounds like the most awkward, stilted, worst imaginable kind of sex.

JFK, blown away

L'Oreal, hair's gone grey

two of the biggest teams in america's only sport of the 1950s® moving from new york to california was huge! not just for the sport but as a symbol of postwar capitalism, there's a reason bernie cites the dodgers moving as his great socialist origin story

arguably a bigger deal than the other 50 baseball references in the song

okay, actually, i'll buy that! shorthand for the whole sunbelt shift, military-industrial boom in socal specifically, etc. something the video is "about" more than the song is, but the signpost is there.

For the longest time I think I thought 'Hula Hoops' Castro was the name of some sports figure with whom I was unfamiliar.

hahahahahahahahaha that's wonderful

I'd love to read a really good book about the Cola Wars. There must be one i'm sure..

Always struck me as odd that Billy thought suicide was invented in the 80s.

Unless he's talking about the band?

He's talking about the combination of fountain drinks.

Other lyrics I misunderstood as a dumb kid:

'Alabama, Krushchev' as 'Alabama cruise jet'
'trouble in the Suez' as 'trouble in the sewage'
'children of thalidomide' as 'children of the little mind'
(I thought 'Space Monkey Mafia' was like a gang or something)
'Payola and Kennedy' as 'KOA a Kennedy' (presumably something about taking a Kennedy camping?)
'Begin, Reagan' as 'Bacon Reagan' (maybe like a roadside attraction featuring a life-sized Ronnie made of bacon)
'AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz' as 'AIDS, crack, Bernie gets' (a weirdly-constructed lyric about someone named Bernie who both contracted AIDS and procured some crack)
'China's under martial law' as 'China's under Martian law'

And then there were lines where I thought he was basically just scatting (whatever 'dim bim foo faw' was).

all excellent

i assumed the suicide thing is "heavy metal suicide," like something to do with the churchy panic about heavy metal driving teens to bad ends etc.

yeah, the Ozzy Osbourne song "Suicide Solution" and the related case I think, or Judas Priest "Better by You, Better Than Me" trial

Yes - check out the song’s Wikipedia page… it details every reference.

get the gun
get the gun
SHOOT
SHOOT
SHOOT

that lawyer was such a clown

This song is irredeemable shit, but it could be worse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_16Ws1vYoc0

song is irredeemable shit
could be worse, couldn't it?
compact discs, Chex Mix
Pee Wee's Playhouse rocks

I have to stop searching for these, this fucking song is a transmissible disease

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-hy715XWeY

Think I would recast my vote for "Birth control, Ho Chi Minh"

How exactly was this song received by non-American listeners? Wikipedia claims it charted in the UK.

From my UK youth, I just remember it as being another quirky list song, though none of us knew exactly what Joel was trying to get at with 'starting the fire'.

Remember being baffled however by the references to 'Dacron' and 'Starkweather homicide'.

Yeah, a big hit here. Enough "world" and "British" references to fly, the "US local" ones pass by at speed.

Xpost

Yeah I was a pre-teen in Britain when this dropped and was really into it for a bit. My mum was a big fan of his. I remember learning about eg Bay of Pigs years later in secondary school and piecing things together from it which was cool.