Why Do So Many People Hate ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire?’

There’s no denying the cultural affect of Billy Joel’s 1989 hit “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” The single spent two weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, earned three Grammy nominations (together with Record and Song of the Year) and stays one among its period’s most simply recognized tunes. But it’s additionally one among the most hated songs of the previous 40 years.

A easy Google search yields pages of scourge towards “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Blender journal listed it amongst their 50 Worst Songs Ever; followers decry it as “pointless,” “ridiculous” and “arguably the worst hit single of [Joel’s] career.”

In a retrospective evaluation, Stereogum tore the track to shreds, describing it as “a cursed and godforsaken work of torment” earlier than including, “If Billy Joel had actually set out to create eardrum-stabbing experimental hell-music, he couldn’t have done any better.”

So what’s it that makes “We Didn’t Start the Fire” the goal of such vitriol? The reply is multifaceted.

Watch Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ Video

It’s All Info With Little Emotion

We begin with the lyrics. While most mainstream pop songs observe some sort of conventional narrative type – a man falls in love, the man will get his coronary heart damaged, and so on. – “We Didn’t Start the Fire” opts for a blitzkrieg of data. In lower than 5 minutes, Joel delivers references to 118 notable historic figures and occasions that passed off in the 40 years between 1949 and 1989. While it’s spectacular that Joel in some way suits all of those references right into a tidy tune, listeners are much less more likely to really feel a heartfelt connection to lyrics which can be factually primarily based quite than with some kind of emotional pull.

Not so coincidentally, when “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was launched in 1989, Joel’s report firm, in collaboration with Scholastic, Inc., despatched the track to hundreds of excessive colleges throughout the U.S., together with a 10-minute discuss by the artist titled “History Is a Living Thing.” Generally talking, music followers do not get pumped for a historical past lesson.

But whereas the lyrics exude a certain quantity of cleverness, the music is painfully elementary. Don’t consider us? Ask the Piano Man himself.

“We Didn’t Start the Fire” Is a “Terrible Piece of Music”

“It’s a terrible piece of music,” Joel as soon as admitted, likening the melody to “a dentist drill.” In a 2021 podcast look, he once more famous that the track’s composition is “more annoying than musical,” this time describing it as sounding like “a mosquito buzzing around your head.”

With the good thing about hindsight, it’s straightforward to see why “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was so successful.

The track, which featured many Cold War references, arrived simply as the Soviet Union was crumbling to an finish. The Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989; a month later, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was No. 1. Timing, as they are saying, is all the pieces.

So the track clicked with one thing in the zeitgeist and have become a large hit. Music historical past is suffering from loads of different related popular culture phenomena – from “Y.M.C.A.” to “Macarena” to “Gangnam Style” – the place comparatively mediocre materials turned inescapable. Still, the hatred towards “We Didn’t Start the Fire” stays on one other stage.

“We Didn’t Start the Fire” Has Never Gone Away

“Fad” songs are inclined to shine brightly after which burn out shortly. By distinction, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” continues to endure. It has spawned hundreds of parodies, together with a 2002 re-working on The Simpsons; Leslie Knope used the track to torture Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation. In the 2012 movie The Five-Year Engagement, Chris Pratt’s character offers a marriage speech by which he lists his good friend’s former lovers in “We Didn’t Start the Fire” vogue. In 2019, Jimmy Fallon carried out a model of the track on The Tonight Show that chronicled the main heroes and occasions from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Pop-punk group Fall Out Boy even launched a model of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in 2023, up to date to incorporate main occasions which have occurred since Joel launched the unique track. Despite criticism from some sections of the web, it turned a success over again.

Time normally permits hatred to calm. Perhaps if “We Didn’t Start the Fire” left the public eye for an prolonged period of time, even its harshest critics would be capable to give the track some reprieve. But as a result of it stays a relentless popular culture presence, contempt for the observe is frequently renewed. In some ways, this track about historical past would most likely profit from turning into historical past. But very similar to the titular blaze, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” goes “on, and on, and on, and on and on.” So does the hate.