History through Music Part 1: We Didn’t Start the Fire – Billy Joel, 1989

It only takes five letters of this song’s title for Google instant to suggest Billy Joel’s 1989 hit single. The song’s lyrics cover forty years of history and reference over 100 significant events and figures..

Billy Joel, a self confessed ‘history nut’, once wanted to become a history teacher and said in an interview at the time of the single’s release that the idea had come to him when talking to a young fan who told him ‘you were born in the fifties, nothing happened in the fifties’.

Joel told author Bill DeMain: “I had turned forty. It was 1989 and I said; "Okay, what's happened in my life?" I wrote down the year 1949. Okay, Harry Truman was president. Popular singer of the day, Doris Day. China went Communist. Another popular singer, Johnnie Ray. Big Broadway show, South Pacific. Journalist, Walter Winchell. Athlete, Joe DiMaggio. Then I went on to 1950.”

Despite the song’s success at the time and longevity to this day, Joel added: “It's one of the worst melodies I've ever written. I kind of like the lyric though”.

Here’s the lyrics all wikibombed up courtesy of ItinerantChild.com:

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 goodbye

CHORUS
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

Josef 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 

[Chorus]

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Zhou Enlai, 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

U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo 

[Chorus]

Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land,
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs and Beijing 

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

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician sex
J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say

[Chorus]

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...