We Didn't Start The Fire

Apparently Billy Joel wrote this song after overhearing a conversation in a music shop, where one of the chatters said that he felt sorry for the older artists, like Billy Joel, as nothing really happened during their lifetime, and that all the important stuff was going to happen in their generation. He wrote this song, with the lyrics composed of people and events from his lifetime, to show that his generation has plenty of important history to lay claim too. I love how the song summarises the second half of the 20th Century, and to a truly great rythmn too. Important to remember that any history we make, is built on the foundations of those who came before. As the old adage goes "Those who do not study history, are doomed to repeat it".

We Didn't Start The Fire by Billy Joel

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 good bye

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 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, Krushchev,
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", Trouble in the 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 tried to fight it.

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac,
Sputnik, Chou 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

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 tried to fight it.

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land",
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion

"Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania,
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex,
JFK blown away, what else do I have to say?

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 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 shores, China's under martial law,
Rock and Roller Cola wars, 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
But when we are gone
It will still burn on, and on, and on, and on...