The video begins with a newly married couple entering their 1940s-style kitchen, and shows events in their domestic life over the next four decades, including the addition of children, their growth, and later, grandchildren, and the eventual death of the family's father. He was 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." Music video External videoīilly Joel – We Didn't Start the Fire (Official Video), 4:05īilly Joel – We Didn't Start The Fire (Official Video, Extended) 04:26Ī music video for the single was directed by Chris Blum. When asked if he deliberately intended to chronicle the Cold War with his song he responded, "It was just my luck that the Soviet Union decided to close down shop ", and that this span "had a symmetry to it, it was 40 years" that he had lived through.
If you take the melody by itself, terrible. In 1993, when discussing it with documentary filmmaker 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 . Joel has also criticized the song on strictly musical grounds.
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. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties". He was in a recording studio and met a 21-year-old friend of Sean Lennon 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. Joel conceived the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. "We Didn't Start the Fire", particularly in the 21st century, has become the basis of many pop culture parodies, and continues to be repurposed in various television shows, advertisements, and comedic productions. Storm Front became Joel's third album to reach number one in the United States. The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became Joel's third single to reach number one on the United States Billboard Hot 100 in late 1989. A list song, its fast-paced lyrics include brief references to 118 significant political, cultural, scientific, and sporting events between 1949, the year of Joel's birth, and 1989, in a mainly chronological order. The song was released as a single on September 27, 1989, and later released as part of Joel's album Storm Front on October 17, 1989. It's some pretty harsh shit."ĭanko Jones responded to Harvey's comments, again on Twitter, and accused him of "playing the victim," and employing "racist tropes." We Didn't Start the Fire" is a song written and performed by American musician Billy Joel.
My mom's gonna read that article, and other people are, and this guy is really painting me out to be something… He's got no idea what I'm like he's got no idea what my friends or my family are like. I'm really hurt by that… It's super offensive. But instead he's putting himself out there and putting that hate out there and it's creating an opportunity for him. It's, like, he could have said nothing and just kept going with his life. You've got some shit to sort… It's an opportunity – that's the issue I have with it. It's the most contradictory, hypocritical thing I've ever experienced. "That's my whole thing about it – the guy is upset because he thinks promotes hate, and he's getting that out by hating it. I don't subscribe to that, and I'm not an angry person. It also feels like he's a very angry person. Addressing Danko Jones' tweets, Harvey said, "I don't want this to come across the wrong way, but it feels a little opportunistic to me.