Fall Out Boy dropped a surprise cover of Billy Joel‘s 1989 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “We Didn’t Start the Fire” on June 28 featuring the group’s modern update of the Piano Man’s breathless blitz through 20th century history. Out were Joel’s Boomer-skewing stream-of-consciousness lines about such h-bombs, Studebakers, Liberace, Marilyn Monroe, Harry Truman, Doris Day, Einstein, Peyton Place and children of thalidomide.
In were the Chicago emo rockers’ updated references (from 1989 to the present) to Rodney King, deep fakes, Kurt Cobain, Harry Potter, MySpace, QAnon, Ballon Boy, Fyre Fest and Stranger Things, among many others. In a recent BBC Radio2 interview Joel said that he’d heard the new verses and weighed in on the effort. “Everybody’s been wanting to know when there’s going to be an updated version of it, because my song started in ’49 and ended in ’89 — it was a 40 year span,” he said. “Everybody said, ‘Well, aren’t you going to do a part two?’ I said, ‘Nah, I’ve already done part one.’ So, Fall Out Boy, go ahead. Great, take it away.”
If you need a guide to follow along to the lightning-speed tumble of references in FOB’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” find the lyrics below:
L.A. riots, Rodney King
Deepfakes, earthquakes
Iceland volcano
Oklahoma City bomb
Kurt Cobain, Pokemon
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
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’re tryin’ to fight it
More war in Afghanistan
Cubs go all the way again
Obama, Spielberg
Explosion, Lebanon
Unabomber, Bobbitt, John
Bombing, Boston Marathon
Balloon Boy, War On Terror
QAnon
Trump gets impeached twice
Polar bears got no ice
Fyre Fest, Black Parade
Michael Phelps, Y2K
Boris Johnson, Brexit
Kanye West and Taylor Swift
Stranger Things, Tiger King
Ever Given, Suez
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’re tryin’ to fight it
Sandy Hook, Columbine
Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice
ISIS, LeBron James
Shinzo Abe blown away
Meghan Markle, George Floyd
Burj Khalifa, Metroid
Fermi paradox
Venus and Serena
Michael Jordan, 23
YouTube killed MTV
SpongeBob
Golden State Killer got caught
Michael Jordan, 45
Woodstock ’99
Keaton Batman, Bush v. Gore
I can’t take it anymore
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’re tryin’ to fight it
Elon Musk, Kaepernick
Texas failed electric grid
Jeff Bezos, climate change
White rhino goes extinct
Great Pacific garbage patch
Tom DeLonge and aliens
Mars rover, Avatar
Self-driving electric cars
SSRIs
Prince and The Queen die
World Trade, second plane
What else do I have to say?
We didn’t start the fire (we didn’t start it up)
It was always burning since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire (we didn’t start it up)
But when we are gone, it will still go on
and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on
We didn’t start the fire (fire)
It was always burning since the world’s been turning
Lyrics licensed & provided by LyricFind
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Billy Joel
