Billy Joel changed pop culture in 1989 by turning a history textbook into a Billboard No. 1 hit. His frantic track, "We Didn't Start the Fire," summarized 40 years of headlines into a massive, breathless earworm. Fast forward to June 2023, and pop-punk titans Fall Out Boy gave the track a massive update. They extended the timeline from 1989 to 2023. How do these two time traveling history lessons stack up against each other? Let's take a look.
While both songs function as hyper-speed time capsules, their execution reflects two entirely different eras of consuming information.
Billy Joel's version came out in 1989
Then you have the Fall Out Boy version that came out in 2023.
The most striking parallels between the tracks appear in how they handle defining historical traumas:
- The Generational Anchors: Billy Joel used the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy as his emotional peak. Fall Out Boy mirrors this weight by ending their final verse with 9/11 ("World Trade, second plane").
- The Pop Culture Flips: Where Joel sang of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, Fall Out Boy updates the roster with Kurt Cobain, Pokémon, and Taylor Swift.
- The Missing Pieces: Fans pointed out some glaring omissions in the 2023 version. Most notably, Fall Out Boy completely left out the COVID-19 pandemic, choosing instead to mention the lockdown-era phenomenon Tiger King.
The Verdict:
Even Billy Joel himself gave his stamp of approval, praising the punk-rockers for tackling such a difficult lyrical feat. Ultimately, both tracks achieve exactly what they set out to do. Joel’s original is a brilliant piece of historical preservation. Fall Out Boy’s remake is a chaotic, loud, and incredibly relatable reflection of our fractured modern attention spans.
The world didn't start burning in 1949, and as Fall Out Boy reminds us in their updated outro, it will still burn on and on long after we are gone.
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