Tuesday, November 30, 2010

We Didn't Start the Fire (Facts) History Summary from 1949-1989 - Succeed through Studying History: School for Champions



"We Didn't Start the Fire" is a song by Billy Joel that makes reference to a catalogue of headline events during his lifetime, from March 1949 (Joel was born on May 9 of that year) to 1989, when the song was released on his album Storm Front. The events are mixed with a refrain asserting "we didn't start the fire". The song was a number-one hit in the US, and its tune has been the foundation of many topic-specific parodies.
The song and music video have been interpreted as a rebuttal to criticism of Joel's Baby Boomer generation. The song's title and refrain reference "the fire", which refers to conflict and societal turmoil; Joel asserts that the existence of these issues can't be blamed on his generation alone, as it has been "always burning since the world's been turning".
Joel has a strong interest in history. "I'm a history nut. I devour history books. At one time I wanted to be a history teacher." According to his mother, he was a bookworm by the age of seven.[1] 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 #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.[2]
Blender magazine ranked "We Didn't Start the Fire" #41 on its list of the "50 Worst Songs Ever", a list that also includes songs from the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel. They considered the production bombastic and stated that the song "resembles a term paper scribbled the night before it’s due."[3]
Joel has mixed feelings about the song. "It's a nightmare to perform live, because if I miss one word, it's a train wreck."[4] He has also called it a "novelty song" that doesn't "really define me as well as album songs that probably don't get played."[5]


The following events are in the order that they appear in the song, which is, with two possible exceptions, chronological.[11] 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.

1940s
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
  • Pope Paul VI: Cardinal Giovanni Montini is elected to the papacy and takes the regnal 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 censure him.
  • Profumo Affair: The British Secretary of State for War 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.
  • John F. Kennedy assassination: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22 while riding in an open convertible through Dallas.
1965
  • 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 entitled Humanae Vitae which declared artificial birth control 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.
1968
1969
1974
1977 (Note that these two items, while later chronologically than the two 1976 items, come immediately before them in the song.)
1976 (Note that these two items, while earlier chronologically than the two 1977 items, come immediately after them in the song)
1979
1983
1984
  • Bernhard 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.
1988
  • Syringe Tide: Medical waste was found washed up on beaches in New Jersey 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.
1989
  • China's Martial law: On May 20, China declares martial law, enabling them to use force of arms against protesting students to end the Tiananmen Square protests.
  • Cola wars: Soft drink giants Coke and Pepsi each run marketing campaigns using rock and roll and popular music stars to reach the young adult demographic.
Of the 56 individuals mentioned by name in the song, the following nine are still alive as of November 7, 2010: Doris Day, Queen Elizabeth II, Brigitte Bardot, Fidel Castro, Chubby Checker, Bob Dylan, John Glenn,Sally Ride, and Bernhard Goetz.
Two individuals, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, are mentioned by name twice in the song.
The only U.S. Presidents in office from 1949 to 1989 not mentioned in the song are Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.


We Didn't Start the Fire (Facts) History Summary from 1949-1989 - Succeed through Studying History: School for Champions

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