Billy Joel: We Didn't Start the Fire Meaning

Song Released: 1989

We Didn't Start the Fire Lyrics

[References link to Wikipedia—Oh yeah! -ed]

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I", and "The Catcher in the Rye"

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

CHORUS
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Josef Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc

Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, dacron
Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock"

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, "Peter Pan", Elvis Presley, Disneyland

Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez

CHORUS

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Zhou Enlai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"

Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide

Buddy Holly, "Ben-Hur", space monkey, Mafia
hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no go

U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo

CHORUS

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs Invasion

"Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex
JFK blown away, what else do I have to say!

CHORUS

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon, back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan

"Wheel of Fortune" , Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law
Rock and Roller Cola Wars, I can't take it anymore!

CHORUS

We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on...

1. anonymous

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   Apr 28th 2011 !⃝

   it means we didnt start the problems theyve been there since the world was turning, but we tried to fight the fire.
2. anonymous

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   Apr 16th 2011 !⃝

   When Billy Joel wrote this song he was talking about all of the crap that was happening in the world from when he was born til when he wrote the song. The "fire" is all the persecution that goes on in the world and hes saying that they didn't start the fire and that they are trying to fight it. Many of the Things that he lists in the song are persecutions between people and issues between groups of people.
3. anonymous

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   May 11th 2010 !⃝

   It's about the 20th century and all the big main events-good & bad, but mostly bad.
4. anonymous

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   Feb 5th 2010 !⃝

   The "fire" that he refers to isn't the same as the list of people and events. The fire is the basic drive of every organism on the planet to survive and overcome their environment. The events listed, whatever significance their order might have, and whoever might be to "blame" for them, are just results of the fire.
5. anonymous

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   Dec 10th 2009 !⃝

   I think it means their were many conflicts at the time, and he wanted to make people aware of it.
6. anonymous

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   May 16th 2009 !⃝

   Billy Joel explained that he wrote this song due to his interest in history. He commented that he would have wanted to be a history teacher if he had not become a musician. "We Didn't Start the Fire" was written after a conversation with John Lennon's son Sean. Sean was complaining that he was growing up in troubled times.
7. eagalrox

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   May 4th 2009 !⃝

   All you bologna heads are WRONG!
   it's a history time line.
   Starting from 1949 to 1989.
   he basically talks about what happened in those years.
   Geez you must feel shameful having a 13 year old tell you off.
   

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
8. anonymous

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   Apr 19th 2009 !⃝

   wow people. This song is about the cold war and various major things that were part of it. i.e. red china=communist china. Billy Joel remembered this stuff and put it into a song. take any item. it happened during the cold war. As for the chorus, the fire is the never ending human struggle with itself. think about it. "when we are gone, will it still burn on?" will the struggle continue? There has been a struggle in the world since the beginning of time. hence the "always burning since the world's been turning. please rate this comment.

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
9. anonymous

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   Mar 3rd 2009 !⃝

   I'm pretty sure its just about the cold war....no I'm positive. Its about the Cold War, things that happened around the cold war...stuff like that. The Fire is communism.
10. anonymous

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    Feb 19th 2009 !⃝

    lol, wow guys you all argue a lot. The meaning of the song is kind of mixed up with all your interpretations. I'm not saying I'm right cause I know for a fact I don't know exactly what Billy Joel wrote this song about but it is true that the thing is a time line of things that happened in his life. Some things good and some bad. Like a lot of you said. Many of you are just stating the same thing that people before you said just in different words. =D it can have different meaning for different people though. A song doesn't always have to have just one clear cut meaning. To make songs mean something to many people it has to effect different people and many people will interpret things differently to make the song meaningful to them. It depends on your personality.
11. CaptainVegetable

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    Feb 3rd 2009 !⃝

    I agree with other posters who stated that it's a timeline of events from Billy Joel's life. According to one source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn't_Start_the_Fire), the timeline runs from 1949 to 1989. This source also identifies all of the people, places and events that are listed in the song.
12. butch

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    Jan 30th 2009 !⃝

    in my opinion the song is how the world is just going and the people or things mentioned in the song is the phenomenons happening in the past 100 or so years and we didnt start the fire means that we didnt start it, it just happens.
    
    butch meister
13. anonymous

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    Jan 22nd 2009 !⃝

    Wow seriously, that one above me is retarded. It has nothing to do with god.
    the opinion written on September 7th, 2008 09:03PM the the correct one. You all have a little bit of truth in your own. but i think that one sums it up best.
    
    But no, its not about god. You can make that connection for yourself, but thats not what it is about.
14. anonymous

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    Jan 15th 2009 !⃝

    Guys, you're all wrong.
    
    This song is totally about God and his love for all of us. It's about how he has a plan for everything in this world.
    
    It's about Jesus. Why don't you all see that?

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
15. m320753

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    Jan 5th 2009 !⃝

    Billy Joel was in a bar/nightclub in the hamptons and was talking to some younger kids about life in general and they were telling billy how hard life is for younger people in today's ever changing times. Billy said he didn't grow up in some fairy tale times either and he started to think of all the things that were capable and some that did in fact change the world that mine and his generation witnessed. Fortunately he has the gift of writing down the occurrences in a orderly fashion and it is a history lesson of the time between the very late 40s to the present time that this song was recorded. I believe he played the song for these local kids before he released it but I'm not sure. and that's that

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