Released on December 9, 1989, Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” became an instant hit. This well- known song hit the number one slot on ARC weekly top 40 and the U.S. billboard hot 100. It also made it to the top ten of Germany, Australia, and UK’s top song lists. This song was released on Billy Joel’s album Storm Front.
“We Didn’t Start the Fire” became a song of not only musical pleasure, nor just a historical lesson, but it also shares the baby- boomer attitude of a passive stance on the events that effect America.
This song goes through different historical events of the Fifties and Sixties. Billy Joel said that he wanted to record all of the things he had to go through in his life, but is that all he is trying to say in this song?
This song starts with post World War II significant world events from an American perspective. The chorus begins with:
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning,
since the worlds been turning.
Saying that since the world began, there were crises of politics, culture, and society. Billy Joel is saying it’s not fair to blame the current generation; it is happening right now because the previous generations have made it that way. It continues with:
No we didn’t light it,
But we tried to fight it.
This is saying that we’re trying to make the problems better, but it’s not our generation’s fault that these problems exist.
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn’s got a winning team
Davy Crockett, “Peter Pan”, Elvis Presley, Disneyland
In this verse, Billy Joel puts scientists, movies, entertainers, and baseball players all in the same sentence, not differentiating between them. We have to ask why? Is he trying to show that Americans can’t separate the differences among political, cultural and social events, or is he solely putting them together because of the time period?
The album, Storm Front, is a self-reflective album of Billy Joel’s. It also contains other songs that reflect his life and the things that occur around him. His message is that he has no control over these events and his songs reflect a passive acceptance about these events because he thinks they will automatically happen no matter what he does:
• We Didn’t Start the Fire – Reflections on shared experiences that everyone went through. A passive reflection of events without any sense of responsibility or control over events.
• Leningrad – you can think foreigners have different experiences and thoughts than you but when you talk to them you realize, you’re all the same.
• And So It Goes – Another reflection of his life, the feeling that his love life is uncontrollable and it will undoubtedly end horribly. He offers the listener no sense that people can have an influence on how love relationships work or fail.
• I Don’t Know Why I Go to Extremes – Billy Joel seeing he goes to different emotional spectrums rapidly and feeling helpless about it; the thought that his emotional roller coaster will happen no matter what. There is no attempt to reflect upon his emotional ups and downs, nor any attempt to change them.
Instead, he sees these moods as something over which he has no control. This album sold over 4,000,000 copies. You must think, is the reason because people like the catchy tunes, or is it because they can relate? Because the baby-boomer generation accepts a passive view of world events and personal experiences?
Why is he sharing all of his feelings to the world? Because he just feels emotional, or because he thinks other people can relate to it too?
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