Another song. Another earworm.
This one was written by Billy Joel in 1989 when he was forty. He had had a contretemps with a much younger man who imagined that only his generation had it tough and people of Joel's age had had it easy. Joel bristled at this and the seeds of "We Didn't Start The Fire" were sown. I suppose he was attempting to say that in his life there had been many crises, many issues, famous people coming and going. The young man had been badly mistaken.
It is a fast-paced list song with references to 120 figures and events and places from post-war history. Not long after releasing the song, Billy Joel indicated some private irritation about it. He grew to dislike it but personally, I think that it is both clever and evocative as it quickly rolls out dozens of references to historical times and famous figures that are all familiar to me - and probably to you too.
Here are the lyrics so that you can sing along to the video that follows:-
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
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser, and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron
Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock"
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, Peyton Place, trouble in the Suez
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Zhou En-Lai, Bridge on the River Kwai
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide
Buddy Holly, Ben-Hur, space monkey, mafia
Hula-hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola, and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shore, China's under martial law
Rock-and-roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone, it will still burn on
And on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/bMCaPez
