Joel got the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a friend of Sean Lennon who had just turned 21 who said "It's a terrible time to be 21!" Joel replied to him, "Yeah, I remember when I was 21 -- I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful." The friend replied, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties". Joel retorted, "Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?" Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for the song.
Joel has said, "I'm a history nut. I devour books. At one time I wanted to be a history teacher". According to his mother, he was a bookworm by the age of seven. Unlike most of Joel's songs, the lyrics were written before the melody, owing to the somewhat unusual style of the song. The song was a huge commercial success and was Joel's third Billboard No. 1 hit. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year.
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 [...]. It's one of the worst melodies I've ever written. I kind of like the lyric though.
Joel has said, "There's an element of malevolence in the song; it's like waiting for the other shoe to drop." He has mentioned having mixed feelings about the song. "It's a nightmare to perform live, because if I miss one word, it's a train wreck." He has called it a "novelty song" that does not "really define me as well as album songs that probably don't get played", and has also criticized the song on strictly musical grounds. In 1993, when discussing it with documentary film maker David Horn, Joel compared its melodic content unfavorably to his song "The Longest Time": "Take a song like 'We Didn't Start the Fire.' It's really not much of a song....If you take the melody by itself, terrible. Like a dentist drill."
When asked if he could do a follow-up about the next couple of years after the events that transpired in the original song, he commented "No, I wrote one song already and I don't think it was really that good to begin with, melodically."
Blender magazine ranked "We Didn't Start the Fire" No. 41 on its list of the "50 Worst Songs Ever." They considered the production bombastic and stated that the song "resembles a term paper scribbled the night before it's due."
A music video for the single was directed by Chris Blum, which chronicles a white middle-class married couple and their goal of the American Dream: a home, careers, and children. This is symbolised by the constant revamping of a domestic kitchen – 1940s utilitarian turning into 1950s Populuxe, 1960s op art, 1970s earth-colored tiles and macramé, and finally 1980s black lacquer & granite bench tops. This is juxtaposed with symbols of the tumultuous social times of the second half of the 20th century (e.g., bra burning, lynching, and draft-card burning). The singer acts as an unseen but omnipresent observer. During each chorus, Joel wearing sunglasses (similar to Roy Orbison's) rhythmically beats on a black table; in the background, famous photographs (of Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination and Nguyễn Văn Lém's execution, among others) are consumed by fire, a metaphor of the song's theme and title.
Though the lyrics are rapid-fire with several people and events mentioned in a single word each, there is widespread agreement on the meaning of the lyrics. Steven Ettinger wrote,
Billy Joel captured the major images, events, and personalities of this half-century in a three-minute song.... It was pure information overload, a song that assumed we knew exactly what he was singing about...What was truly alarming was the realization that we, the listeners, for the most part understood the references.
The following events (with Joel's lyric for each appearing in bold) are listed in the order that they appear in the song, which is almost entirely chronological. The lyric for each individual event is brief and the events are punctuated by the chorus and other lyrical elements. The following list includes longer, more descriptive names for clarity. Events from a variety of contexts — such as popular entertainment, foreign affairs, and sports — are intermingled, giving an impression of the culture of the time as a whole. There are 119 items listed in the song.
Harry Truman was inaugurated as U.S. president after being elected in 1948 to his second and final presidential term; previously he was sworn in following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He authorized the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War II, on August 6 and August 9, 1945, respectively.
Doris Day enters the public spotlight with the films My Dream Is Yours and It's a Great Feeling as well as popular songs like "It's Magic".
Red China: The Communist Party of China wins the Chinese Civil War, establishing the People's Republic of China.
Johnnie Ray signs his first recording contract with Okeh Records, although he would not become popular for another two years.
South Pacific, the prize-winning musical, opens on Broadway on April 7.
Walter Winchell is an aggressive radio and newspaper journalist credited with inventing the gossip column.
Joe DiMaggio and the New York Yankees go to five World Series in the 1940s, winning four of them.
Joe McCarthy, the U.S. Senator, gains national attention and begins his anti-Communism crusade with his Lincoln Day speech.
Richard Nixon is first elected to the United States Senate.
Studebaker, a popular car company, begins its financial downfall.
Television is becoming widespread throughout Europe and North America.
North Korea and South Korea declare war after Northern forces stream south on June 25.
Marilyn Monroe soars in popularity with five new movies, including The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve.
The Rosenbergs, Ethel and Julius, were convicted on June 19 for espionage.
H-Bomb: The United States is in the middle of developing the hydrogen bomb as a nuclear weapon; it would be first tested in late 1952.
Sugar Ray Robinson, a champion boxer, defeats Jake LaMotta in the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre"
Panmunjom, the border village in Korea, is the location of truce talks between the parties of the Korean War.
Marlon Brando is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire.
The King and I, the musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, opens on Broadway on March 29.
The Catcher in the Rye, a controversial novel by J. D. Salinger, is published.
Dwight D. Eisenhower is first elected as President of the United States, winning by a landslide margin of 442 to 89 electoral votes.
The vaccine for polio is privately tested by Jonas Salk.
England's got a new queen: Queen Elizabeth II succeeds to the throne upon the death of her father, George VI, and is crowned the next year.
Rocky Marciano defeats Jersey Joe Walcott, becoming the world heavyweight boxing champion.
Liberace has a popular 1950s television show for his musical entertainment.
Santayana goodbye: George Santayana, philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist, dies on September 26.
Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, dies on March 5
Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Stalin for six months following his death. Malenkov had presided over Stalin's purges, but would be spared a similar fate by his successor Nikita Khrushchev.
Gamal Abdel Nasser acts as the true power behind the new Egyptian nation as Muhammad Naguib's minister of the interior.
Sergei Prokofiev, the composer, dies on March 5, the same day as Stalin.
Winthrop Rockefeller and his wife Barbara are involved in a highly publicized divorce, culminating in 1954 with a record-breaking $5.5 million settlement.
Roy Campanella, an African-American baseball catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, receives the National League's Most Valuable Player award for the second time.
Communist bloc: The uprising of 1953 in East Germany is crushed by the Volkspolizei and the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany.
Roy Cohn resigns as Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel and enters private practice with the fall of McCarthy.
Juan Perón spends his last full year as President of Argentina before a September 1955 coup.
Arturo Toscanini is at the height of his fame as a conductor, performing regularly with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on national radio.
Dacron is an early artificial fiber made from the same plastic as polyester.
Dien Bien Phu falls. A French/Vietnamese camp falls to Viet Minh forces under Vo Nguyen Giap, signaling the end of French Indochina and leading to the creation of North Vietnam and South Vietnam as separate states.
"Rock Around the Clock" is a hit single released by Bill Haley & His Comets in May, spurring worldwide interest in rock and roll music.
Albert Einstein dies on April 18 at the age of 76.
James Dean achieves success with East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, gets nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and dies in a car accident on September 30 at the age of 24.
Brooklyn's got a winning team: The Brooklyn Dodgers win their first and only World Series before their move to Los Angeles.
Davy Crockett is a Disney television miniseries about the legendary frontiersman of the same name. The show was a huge hit with young boys and inspired a short-lived "coonskin cap" craze.
Peter Pan: A year after Walt Disney Animation Studios released an animated adaption of the play by J. M. Barrie, the 1954 stage musical of the same name starring Mary Martin is broadcast on NBC live and in color.
Elvis Presley signs with RCA Records on November 21, beginning his pop career.
Disneyland opens on July 17, 1955 as Walt Disney's first theme park.
Brigitte Bardot appears in her first mainstream film And God Created Woman and establishes an international reputation as a French "sex kitten".
Budapest is the capital city of Hungary and site of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Alabama is the site of the Montgomery Bus Boycott which ultimately led to the removal of the last race laws in the USA. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr figure prominently.
Nikita Khrushchev makes his famous Secret Speech denouncing Stalin's "Cult of personality" on February 25.
Princess Grace Kelly releases her last film, High Society, and marries Prince Rainier III of Monaco.
Peyton Place, the best-selling novel by Grace Metalious, is published. Though mild compared to today's standards, it shocked the reserved values of the 1950s.
Trouble in the Suez: The Suez Crisis boils as Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal on October 29.
Little Rock, Arkansas is the site of an anti-integration standoff, as Governor Orval Faubus stops the Little Rock Nine from attending Little Rock Central High School and President Eisenhower deploys the 101st Airborne Division to counteract him.
Boris Pasternak, the Russian author, publishes his novel Doctor Zhivago.
Mickey Mantle is in the middle of his career as a famous New York Yankees outfielder and American League All-Star for the sixth year in a row.
Jack Kerouac publishes his first novel in seven years, On the Road.
Sputnik becomes the first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, marking the start of the space race.
Chou En-Lai, Premier of the People's Republic of China, survives an assassination attempt on the charter airliner Kashmir Princess.
The Bridge on the River Kwai, an adaptation of a the 1954 novel, is released and receives seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Lebanon is engulfed in a political and religious crisis that eventually involves U.S. intervention.
Charles de Gaulle is elected first president of the French Fifth Republic following the Algerian Crisis.
California baseball begins as the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants move to California and become the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, respectively. They are the first teams in Major League Baseball west of Kansas City.
Charles Starkweather Homicide: Starkweather's murder spree, in which he kills eleven people between January 25 and 29 before being caught in a massive manhunt in Douglas, Wyoming, captures the attention of Americans.
Children of Thalidomide: Many pregnant women taking the drug Thalidomide had children born with congenital birth defects.
Buddy Holly dies in a plane crash on February 3 with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper, in a day that had a devastating impact on the country and youth culture. Joel prefaces the lyric with a Holly signature vocal hiccup: "Uh-huh, uh-huh."
Ben-Hur, a film adapted from Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ starring Charlton Heston, wins eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Space Monkey: Aboard the flight Jupiter AM-18, Able and Miss Baker become the first two animals to be launched into space and returned to Earth alive.
The Mafia are the center of attention for the FBI and public attention builds to this organized crime society with a historically Italian-American origin.
Hula hoops reach 100 million in sales as the latest toy fad.
Fidel Castro comes to power after a revolution in Cuba and visits the United States later that year on an unofficial twelve-day tour.
Edsel is a no-go: Production of this car marque ends after only three years due to poor sales.
U-2: An American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union, causing the U-2 Crisis of 1960.
Syngman Rhee was rescued by the CIA after being forced to resign as leader of South Korea for allegedly fixing an election and embezzling more than US $20 million.
Payola, illegal payments for radio broadcasting of songs, was publicized due to Dick Clark's testimony before Congress and Alan Freed's public disgrace.
John F. Kennedy beats Richard Nixon in the November 8 general election.
Chubby Checker popularizes the dance The Twist with his cover of the song of the same name.
Psycho: An Alfred Hitchcock thriller, based on a pulp novel by Robert Bloch and adapted by Joseph Stefano, which becomes a landmark in graphic violence and cinema sensationalism. The screeching violins heard at this point in the song are a trademark of the film's soundtrack.
Belgians in the Congo: The Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville) was declared independent of Belgium on June 30, with Joseph Kasavubu as President and Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister.
Ernest Hemingway commits suicide on July 2 after a long battle with depression.
Adolf Eichmann, a "most wanted" Nazi war criminal, is traced to Argentina and captured by Mossad agents. He is covertly taken to Israel where he is put on trial for crimes against humanity during World War II, convicted in 1961, and hanged the following year, 1962.
Stranger in a Strange Land, written by Robert A. Heinlein, is a breakthrough best-seller with themes of sexual freedom and liberation.
Bob Dylan is signed to Columbia Records after a New York Times review by critic Robert Shelton.
Berlin is separated into West Berlin and East Berlin, and from the rest of East Germany, when the Berlin Wall is erected on August 13 to prevent citizens escaping to the West.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion fails, an attempt by United States-trained Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro.
Lawrence of Arabia: The Academy Award-winning film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence starring Peter O'Toole premieres in America on December 16.
British Beatlemania: The Beatles, a British rock group, gain Ringo Starr as drummer and Brian Epstein as manager, and join the EMI's Parlophone label. They soon become the world's most famous rock band, with the word "Beatlemania" adopted by the press for their fans' unprecedented enthusiasm. It also began the British Invasion in the United States.
Ole Miss: A riot was fought between Southern segregationist civilians and federal and state forces as a result of the forced enrollment of black student James Meredith at the University of Mississippi.
John Glenn: Flew the first American manned orbital mission termed "Friendship 7" on February 20.
Liston beats Patterson: Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson fight for the world heavyweight championship on September 25, ending in a first-round knockout. This match marked the first time Patterson had ever been knocked out and one of only eight losses in his 20-year professional career.
Pope Paul VI: Cardinal Giovanni Montini is elected to the papacy and takes the papal name of Paul VI.
Malcolm X makes his infamous statement "The chickens have come home to roost" about the Kennedy assassination, thus causing the Nation of Islam to censor him; about fifteen months later, he himself is assassinated while preparing to make a speech.
British politician sex: The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, has a relationship with a showgirl, and then lies when questioned about it before the House of Commons. When the truth came out, it led to his own resignation and undermined the credibility of the Prime Minister.
JFK blown away: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22 while riding in an open convertible through Dallas.
Birth control: In the early 1960s, oral contraceptives, popularly known as "the pill", first go on the market and are extremely popular. Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 challenged a Connecticut law prohibiting contraceptives. In 1968, Pope Paul VI released a papal encyclical titled Humanae vitae which reaffirmed Catholic teaching that artificial birth control was a sin.
Ho Chi Minh: A Vietnamese Communist, who served as President of Vietnam from 1954–1969. March 2 Operation Rolling Thunder begins bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply line from North Vietnam to the Vietcong rebels in the south. On March 8, the first U.S. combat troops, 3,500 marines, land in South Vietnam.
Richard Nixon back again: Former Vice President Nixon is elected President in 1968.
Moonshot: Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing, successfully lands on the moon.
Woodstock: Famous rock and roll festival of 1969 that came to be the epitome of the counterculture movement.
Watergate: Political scandal that began when the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. was broken into. After the break-in, word began to spread that President Richard Nixon may have known about the break-in, and tried to cover it up. The scandal would ultimately result in the resignation of President Nixon; to date, this remains the only time that anyone has ever resigned the United States Presidency.
Punk rock: Blondie and The Ramones form, with the Sex Pistols following in 1975, ushering in the punk era.
(An item from 1976 is put between items from 1977 to make the song scan better.)
Menachem Begin becomes Prime Minister of Israel in 1977 and negotiates the Camp David Accords with Egypt's president in 1978.
Ronald Reagan, former Governor of California, begins his second Presidential campaign in 1976. He eventually wins in the next election in 1980.
Palestine: The ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict escalates as Israelis establish settlements in the West Bank, previously held by Jordan for non-Jewish Palestinians after the 1948 war, beginning shortly after Begin's election.
Terror on the air line: Numerous aircraft hijackings take place, specifically, the Palestinian hijack of Air France Flight 139 and the subsequent Operation Entebbe in Uganda.
Ayatollahs in Iran: During the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the West-backed and secular Shah is overthrown as the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gains power after years in exile and creates an Islamic society
Russians in Afghanistan: Following their move into Afghanistan on December 24, Soviet forces fight a ten-year war up until 1989.
Wheel of Fortune: The hit television game show, on air since 1975, underwent several changes in the early 1980s, including the hiring of Pat Sajak as host in 1981, Vanna White as hostess in 1982, and a move to syndication in 1983, all three of which were still in effect by the time of the song (and remained through the 1990s, 2000s and much of the 2010s as well).
Sally Ride: On June 18, she became the first American woman in space by flying aboard Challenger on the STS-7 shuttle mission.
Heavy metal suicide: In the 1970s and 80s, heavy metal bands became popular. Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest in particular were sued for fans' suicides after listening to their songs "Suicide Solution" and "Better By You, Better Than Me", respectively.
Foreign debts: Persistent U.S. trade and budget deficits
Homeless vets: Veterans of the Vietnam War, including many disabled ex-military, are reported to be left homeless and impoverished.
AIDS: A collection of symptoms and infections in humans resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is first detected and recognized in the 1980s, and was on its way to becoming a pandemic.
Crack cocaine use surged in the mid-to-late 1980s.
Bernie Goetz: On December 22, Goetz shot four young men who he said were threatening him on a New York City subway. Goetz was charged with attempted murder but was acquitted of the charges, though convicted of carrying an unlicensed gun.
Hypodermics on the shore: Medical waste was found washed up on the beaches of Long Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut after being illegally dumped at sea. Before this event, waste dumped in the oceans was an "out of sight, out of mind" affair. This has been cited as one of the crucial turning points in popular opinion on environmentalism.
China's under martial law: On May 20, China declares martial law, resulting in the use of military forces against protesting students to end the Tiananmen Square protests.
Rock-and-roller cola wars: Soft drink giants Coke and Pepsi each run marketing campaigns using rock & roll and popular music stars to reach the teenage and young adult demographic.
Numerous parodies and takeoffs have been based on the song, including The Simpsons' parody "They'll Never Stop the Simpsons" at the end of the 2002 "Gump Roast" episode, and the San Francisco a cappella group The Richter Scales' 2007 Webby Award-winning parody "Here Comes Another Bubble." Cornell University's oldest a cappella group Cayuga's Waiters perform a version entitled "We Didn't Go to Harvard" with constantly changing lyrics to reflect the changing Cornell experience but always mentioning various Cornell and Ithaca landmarks. The band Guns 'n' Moses made a parody of the song called "We Love Barney Fife" that was played frequently on the Doctor Demento radio show, which not only paid tribute to The Andy Griffith Show, it also took advantage of the melody of the refrain being a suitable counterpoint for the Andy Griffith Show theme ("The Fishin' Hole"). The song was also parodied on the episode of the U.S. version of The Office where "Ryan the temp" starts a fire in the office building, and Dwight and Michael change the lyrics of the song to "Ryan Started The Fire".
Another parody was released in 2010 titled "The Wii Didn't Start the Fire" about the history of video games. "We Didn't Start the Fire" was also used in the American comedy series Parks and Recreation in the seventh season episode, "Leslie and Ron" (aired 20 January 2015), in which Leslie attempted to sing the song in order to get Ron to confess about why he left the parks department.
JibJab set their 2007 year in review song to "We Didn't Start the Fire"'s tune. In early 2009, comedy website CollegeHumor created a parody entitled "We Didn't Start the Flame War" which chronicles a long list of common inflammatory (and often explicit) comments left on content over a wide variety of popular websites by internet trolls.
In 1993, Lenny Solomon and Shlock Rock created a parody entitled "We've Got a Strong Desire", which contains over 5000 years of Jewish history told in the tune of the song. In the Netherlands the Dutch punk rock band Heideroosjes did a parody on their 20-year anniversary album about things that happened over those twenty years in the Netherlands called "De Wereld Draait Door" (The World Keeps Turning). German comedian Otto Waalkes did a parody called "Wir haben Grund zum Feiern" (English: "We have reason to celebrate"), with a list of alcoholic beverages.
An edition of the BBC Three comedy programme 'Russell Howard's Good News' featured a parody of the song detailing numerous items that the Daily Mail newspaper actually believed caused cancer.
Fans of Homestuck uploaded a version of the song called "You Can't Fight the Homestuck" on YouTube in 2012, chronicling the webcomic's long and convoluted story. YouTuber Daneboe/Dane Boedigheimer, known as creator of the popular comedic Web series Annoying Orange, produced a parody as part of YouTube's Comedy Week in 2013 titled "We Didn't Start the Viral." In a 2013 episode of Family Guy (titled "Bigfat"), after Peter's plane goes down, he asks his friends if there might be a hint on how to start a fire in the song. He proceeds to sing the song but has forgotten almost all of the words and mumbles through it.
Pop band Milo Greene performed a version of the song in June 2013 for The A.V. Club's A.V. Undercover series. In 2015, Sky Sports released their own version of the song to advertise the upcoming 2015 Ashes series, with backing vocals and percussion provided by Elio Pace and his band. Pace has toured and recorded with Joel's original touring band.
There is a song on YouTube that mentions all 92 English football league teams in a similar quick-fire format.
