Somehow, Fall Out Boy made an all-time bad song even worse

June 28, 2023 1:19 PM

The latest salvo in the internecine let-them-fight war between millennials and boomers comes from Fall Out Boy, who just covered Billy Joel’s headache-inducing earworm “We Didn’t Start the Fire” with an update of events that have transpired in the decades since the song’s release in 1989. Where Joel’s day-zero cringegasm (take it from me, folks — I was in high school at the time) at least makes its references chronologically, Fall Out Boy’s update is all over the map. John Wayne Bobbitt (1993) gets coupled with the Boston Marathon bombing that happened 20 years later. I can’t tell if “Keaton Batman/Bush v. Gore” means the 1989 Tim Burton movie or The Flash, but either way, they’re at least a decade apart. Even worse is the tastelessness in lyrics like “Shinzo Abe blown away,” then rhyming George Floyd with Metroid. Listening to this made me feel as unhappy as Hank Hill in the King of the Hill episode about religious rock: “You’re not making Christianity any better, you’re just making rock ’n’ roll worse!” Anyway, the single is available now. Listen if you dare; we really don’t recommend it. [via: Polygon]
posted by Fizz (141 comments total)

Is it the intent of the OP to provide a cesspool into which we can dump our most intense musical loathing?
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:33 PM on June 28, 2023 [17 favorites]

Is it the intent of the OP to provide a cesspool into which we can dump our most intense musical loathing?

More of a wicker man if you prefer to go the auto-da-fé route.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:36 PM on June 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

"You're not making Fall Out Boy any better, you're just making Metafilter worse!" is right here
posted by away for regrooving at 1:38 PM on June 28, 2023 [65 favorites]

The sheer audacity to just drop chronology, as though it's a towering achievement to rhyme any two things that have happened across a span of 20 years.
posted by neutralhydrogen at 1:39 PM on June 28, 2023 [40 favorites]

You know, I'm sure I'm inviting mockery but I don't mind the occasional listen to We Didn't Start the Fire; I've got it on my Zeitgeist playlist along with a bunch of the Clash and Rage Against the Machine and a few versions of Bella Ciao and Solidarity Forever and similar.
posted by an octopus IRL at 1:40 PM on June 28, 2023 [29 favorites]

Metafilter: Your favorite band sucks.
posted by vitia at 1:44 PM on June 28, 2023 [8 favorites]

Let us not forget Neil Cicierega's Space Monkey Mafia
posted by cortex at 1:45 PM on June 28, 2023 [10 favorites]

Over/under versus Plankton sings Rolling in The Deep by Adele?
posted by clawsoon at 1:45 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'd mock you but for the execrable hypocrisy

also, the real criminal song of Billy Joel's is "Uptown Girl" imo because just typing that out has resulted in that stupid, stupid song getting lodged in my head for the next few hours and not even the jaws of life are gonna pry that out now
posted by elkevelvet at 1:45 PM on June 28, 2023 [27 favorites]

I remembered there being more of a through-line to Joel's song but I was wrong, it's just as contextless a list of people and things. Maybe the "chronology" people are missing made more sense in 1989 but it all runs together from here. So as an update this passes for "fine" but I feel like a little more workshopping could have made it much more impactful.
posted by kjh at 1:48 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

I actually don't mind the original. I mean, when it came out it prompted me to look some stuff up at the library.

"What happened at Dien Bien Phu? Oh shit."

But in this version, owing to a preponderance of intervening syllables, "Iron Man" couldn't rhyme with "Japan" because it took too long to get there and timed out.

Scansion. How does it work?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:49 PM on June 28, 2023 [14 favorites]

I grinned the whole time watching it. Not mad, and some of the juxtapositions had me laughing for real.
posted by wemayfreeze at 1:49 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

as though it's a towering achievement to rhyme any two things that have happened across a span of 20 years

30. It's been 30 years. Actually 34. Oh god I'm old.
posted by hippybear at 1:51 PM on June 28, 2023 [10 favorites]

It took America 100 years to tear down the Confederate monuments. We need to get on this immediately.
posted by PlusDistance at 1:51 PM on June 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

Metafilter: Your favorite band sucks

MetaFilter: a cesspool into which we can dump our most intense musical loathing
posted by The Tensor at 1:51 PM on June 28, 2023 [14 favorites]

We spent one day in my high school Social Studies class going through the original as a high-level overview of recentish American history. I still kind of hate the song but it was an interesting class and good idea for instruction before it was easy to wikipedia things

This new version will not be a useful teaching tool.
posted by JZig at 1:57 PM on June 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

It feels like a missed opportunity to fall back on "Iceland volcano" like they did instead of showing off how to work "Eyjafjallajökull" into the lyrics.
posted by traveler_ at 1:58 PM on June 28, 2023 [23 favorites]

ⓒ🅁ⓘ🄽ⓖ🄴ⓖ🄰ⓢ🄼
posted by lalochezia at 2:00 PM on June 28, 2023 [6 favorites]

I'd just like to ask everybody to take a moment to reflect that we built this city. We built this city on rock 'n' roll.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 2:00 PM on June 28, 2023 [60 favorites]

That's great
It starts with an earthquake
Birds and snakes
And aeroplanes
And Lenny Bruce is not afraid
Birds and snakes, and aeroplanes
Eye of a hurricane
Listen to yourself churn
World serves its own needs
Don't mis-serve your own needs
posted by infinitewindow at 2:02 PM on June 28, 2023 [36 favorites]

It’s Still Billy Joel to Me
posted by TedW at 2:02 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'd just like to ask everybody to take a moment to reflect that we built this city. We built this city on rock 'n' roll.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 5:00 PM on June 28

I hope you didn’t just give them the idea to cover that song next!
posted by TedW at 2:04 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

The goggles

They do nothing
posted by thecaddy at 2:06 PM on June 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

In related news, two composers have sadly conceded their title of "worst song ever."
posted by Candleman at 2:08 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

doctor

could you pass the noise-canceling skewers please

merci
posted by lalochezia at 2:09 PM on June 28, 2023 [11 favorites]

The latest salvo in the internecine let-them-fight war between millennials and boomers

Gen X just hanging over here out of the line of fire...
posted by The Tensor at 2:10 PM on June 28, 2023 [26 favorites]

the real criminal song of Billy Joel's is "Uptown Girl"

When it comes to recording criminal songs, Mr. Joel is what they used to call a superpredator.

('Superpredator,' by the way, is a word that without even listening I can tell you does not appear in that Fall Out Boy song.)
posted by box at 2:18 PM on June 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

Thanks!. I Hate It.
posted by Faintdreams at 2:18 PM on June 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

Honest question, is "JFK/blown away" more tasteful?

Sorry I haven't listened to this new song but the original is pretty bad. It's not even entirely chronological!
posted by muddgirl at 2:22 PM on June 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

I was sitting at a long traffic light the other day while this song was playing, and I thought, "Someone needs to update this for the modern era. Too bad Billy Joel's retired or whatever and won't do it any more." So thanks, Fall Out Boy!

(Yes, I guess we are blaming this on me, i.e. For Once Manifestation Worked!)
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:28 PM on June 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

I won’t listen to it, but the entire conceit amuses me.
posted by slogger at 2:30 PM on June 28, 2023

Doesn't hold a candle to James Taylor's update to 'Fire and Rain.'
posted by kikaider01 at 2:31 PM on June 28, 2023 [8 favorites]

I'd just like to ask everybody to take a moment to reflect that we built this city. We built this city on rock 'n' roll.

Your actions have been reported to the Hague.
posted by PlusDistance at 2:31 PM on June 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

As advertised.
posted by Artw at 2:36 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I actually don't mind the original. I mean, when it came out it prompted me to look some stuff up at the library.

I have very fond memories of the original as a way of structuring inquiry into American historical moments: it's a way to think about the moments that impacted someone over forty years strongly enough to leave an impression. Like any historical text, the choice of events are as interesting as the actual references: what do you leave out, and what do you include, and why?

(Of course, I first encountered it in eighth grade, where it joined quite a bit of other musical commentary intended to encourage us to explore pieces of American history in the last fifty years.)

I like the new one fine, although I really would like it more if it had been chronological and especially if the chosen moments had been moments rather than referenced longer-term moral panics or talking points. I had some fun earlier today annotating the Genius.com lyrics of the new one and thinking about what, exactly, the lyricist is trying to invoke with the chosen pieces, but it's definitely much harder to set years to things like 'Monsanto, GMO' (the first GMO approved for testing? the farmer suicides in India? concerns about glyphosate overuse? moral panic about genetically modified apples for some reason?) or 'earthquakes'.

I do think the format of the song is one of those works best appreciated with an annotation at hand or a willingness to go look up what the fuck the lyricist is referencing, which is not everyone's cup of tea. But I enjoy that sort of thing, especially if I know enough of the references to ping in recognition every few seconds or so.
posted by sciatrix at 2:37 PM on June 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

I loved Billy Joel when I was ten. I stuck with him through An Innocent Man. But Storm Front? We parted ways.
posted by phooky at 2:38 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

We have started
the fire
that was in
the second song

Though we
Still say we didn’t
start
The first one

Forgive us
We are a generation
time moves on
And we got old
posted by Artw at 2:40 PM on June 28, 2023 [52 favorites]

I loved Billy Joel when I was ten. I stuck with him through An Innocent Man. But Storm Front? We parted ways.

For me the "Fuck Billy Joel" moment was when he fired his bass player and friend Doug Stegmeyer for not taking Billy Joel's drug-addicticted-bullshit and trying to get Billy to deal with his addiction. Then came Doug's depression and tragic suicide.

Fuck You, Billy Joel.
posted by mikelieman at 2:42 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

A valuable lesson for all: nine times out of ten, shit + shit = 2shit.
posted by senor biggles at 2:44 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ha. I'm not a FOB fan , but I was visiting family last week and I was invited to attend a show. While it was clear that WDSTF was being covered, and that the lyrics had been updated, none of them registered. There's no way they could have made the song worse, was our consensus.

It did give me a chance to air one of my favorite rants -- the one about this being the absolute worst song ever written. I always imagine BJ sitting on the toilet, pondering how much he admired "it's the end of the world as we know it" by REM and doodling some similar thoughts on the toilet paper roll. At this point he had the opportunity to do the right thing -- he could have used the TP for its intended purpose and the world would have kept on spinning, but -- being the talentless narcissist that he apparently is, he decided to bring his shit lyrics into the studio and record a song.

Back to FOB -- the show was okay, but it's worth mentioning that they "covered" several songs, but mostly just by playing enough of the intro to make the song recognizable, and then the hook or chorus to get the crowd going, but never the whole song, which I thought was kinda weird. The guy's got a good voice, and several times my son mentioned that he didn't expect to be at a Journey concert, so when they started into Don't Stop Believin', the whole crowd was singing along and were in the palm of the band's hand, only to have it be part of a medley of half songs including WDSTF. kinda blah.
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:45 PM on June 28, 2023 [6 favorites]

Doesn't hold a candle to James Taylor's update to 'Fire and Rain.'

Speaking of candles…
posted by TedW at 2:51 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

WOW. This is so tremendously bad. I actually really like the original, and I think there’s potential for someone talented in the real of music/lyrics/rhythm to make a pretty devastating and powerful update.

This ain’t it.
posted by obfuscation at 2:52 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Gen X just hanging over here out of the line of fire.

Oh well, whatever, nevermind.

In other news, given that the original crappy version of this song figured so prominently in the Jesus, would the parents stop letting their midlife/mid-divorce FEELINGS playlist contaminate literally every single ride to junior high, my thoughts and prayers go out to the middle schoolers of today. It is my sincerest hope for you kids that no mall emo band of the W era covers "And So It Goes" so you don't have to walk in and discover your mom making out with your best friend's almost recently divorced dad to it.
posted by thivaia at 2:53 PM on June 28, 2023 [17 favorites]

what's wrong with immortalizing the moment billy joel jumped the shark with a cowpat in his shape in the center of town?
posted by graywyvern at 2:53 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's equally as bad as I was expecting, which follows FOB's trajectory quite nicely from their first album which I thought was fine to their Beat It cover to their Spiderman themesong which is quite awful.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:59 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

For me the "Fuck Billy Joel" moment

Christie Brinkley is on Metafilter!
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:01 PM on June 28, 2023 [12 favorites]

The chronological order or lack thereof is the least of the issues with the basic idea of the song. For me it’s the chorus: ok, so maybe “the fire” is just, like, world events or something - not a great metaphor but if it ended there, fine. But “we didn’t light it but we tried to fight it”: what? The list includes both good and bad events, just names of notable people both good and bad, etc. Trying to stop wars or other negative upheavals I get, but the song seems to be saying that Billy Joel is trying to fight the flow of history itself? And Marilyn Monroe? If that’s what “the fire” is, it’s either a completely vacuous, un-thought-out chorus or a deeply regressive sentiment. Or both - probably it’s both.

My deep dislike and strongly resentful beanplating of this song brought to you by having to listen to it Every. Single. Day. for what felts like months on end (but was probably only weeks) in junior high social studies class, yet not actually being taught anything of actual substance about any of the people or events mentioned. Social studies teacher was just a big Billy Joel fan, and thought that having a pop song that mentioned historical people and events would somehow improve students’ interest in social studies by I dunno osmosis or something.
posted by eviemath at 3:04 PM on June 28, 2023 [12 favorites]

so you don't have to walk in and discover your mom making out with your best friend's almost recently divorced dad to it

Is there any good soundtrack for that?
posted by Dip Flash at 3:04 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

Is there any good soundtrack for that?

Fair point. But "Storm Front" had already rocketed to the top ten of my personal "Records They Play In Hell" chart.
posted by thivaia at 3:07 PM on June 28, 2023

Bush v. Gore

Isn't this referring to the long-term debate over sex and violence in different media?
posted by biffa at 3:16 PM on June 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

Did... did they not mention COVID-19?
posted by Xiphias Gladius at 3:16 PM on June 28, 2023 [13 favorites]

i kinda like billy joel :(
posted by Laura Palmer's Cold Dead Kiss at 3:19 PM on June 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

I didn’t hate the original, though I can understand why others do. I would have liked this one more if there had been some attempt at chronological order, even just grouping by decades.

But I admit I laughed out loud at “EverGiven Suez!” placed at just the right spot to mimic the original.
posted by cinnamonduff at 3:22 PM on June 28, 2023 [8 favorites]

To start with I'm going to say that I think the original is a good song and a great Billy Joel song - those are different grading curves.

The only saving grace of this new version is that I think of Billy Joel the lyricist as a songwriter whose reach far exceeds his grasp - he's an adequate song writer but he sometimes aims at this sort of Paul Simon-ish folky mode and captures the tone without the spirit - and this FOB version is a GREAT example of understanding the tone of the song but not really getting the spirit. The older one is obviously narrative and the new one is purely random, so there's no escalation, lousy rhymes, sublime to ridiculous mood swings, etc.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 3:23 PM on June 28, 2023 [7 favorites]

The only reason I have for hating that song has nothing to do with the song and entirely to do with the fact that this was in primary rotation everywhere all the time when it was popular. MTV was probably playing the video 6x an hour, radio stations had it on, gas stations, grocery stores, malls... It was really inescapable.

It may be difficult to understand what that level of media saturation with a song across all aspects of culture is like these days with our fractured landscape. But it's a good song. I don't hate it because I hate the song. It was like All I Want For Christmas Is You at its peak but for about six months and it's not as fun a melody as Mariah's.
posted by hippybear at 3:28 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

The older one is obviously narrative

We seem to be operating with a different understanding of the meaning of “narrative”. A chronological list (especially one with no other structure or organizing principle) is not a narrative.
posted by eviemath at 3:30 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

The older one is obviously narrative

Plus the older one ends on rock n roller cola wars, like actual war or presidents being assassinated is ok, but convincing people to like Pepsi is just too much. That's some quality unintentional comedy.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:30 PM on June 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

I couldn't bear to listen to it so I googled the lyrics. Most of it was awful shit so why they got to call out Obama?
posted by a humble nudibranch at 3:31 PM on June 28, 2023

Can we do Pressure, but update the lyrics to be about submarines and billionaires?

Too soon?
posted by swift at 3:32 PM on June 28, 2023 [11 favorites]

Eviemath: to bean plate the original a bit though - it's a boomer cri de coeur. The speaker's only relationship to history is to look at it and say "We (my generation) didn't do this! It was all just stuff that happened to us! We tried to stop it! It was this way when we got here!" etc.

If you saw someone who pathologically avoids taking responsibility for things - say, Donald Trump - alone in a room with a small pile of papers on fire he would recite the chorus to this song basically verbatim.

Part of the narrative movement of the song is that as it goes from 50s to 80s, the references in the song increasingly start to refer to fires that the boomers started and still can't accept that they're responsible for. I don't think that's something Billy Joel was aware of when he wrote it; I think he was a voice of his generation but in a different way than he might have thought.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 3:34 PM on June 28, 2023 [17 favorites]

I am sitting
In the morning
At the diner
On the corner


---

Your welcome
posted by allium cepa at 3:34 PM on June 28, 2023 [21 favorites]

Can we do Pressure, but update the lyrics to be about submarines and billionaires?

How about Pressure Drop - Toots and the Maytals?
posted by clawsoon at 3:35 PM on June 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

The sheer audacity to just drop chronology, as though it's a towering achievement to rhyme any two things that have happened across a span of 20 years.

This. Oh so this. Turned it on, saw the song was immediately all over the fucking place, turned it off.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:39 PM on June 28, 2023

The answer to a question nobody asked, the top five Billy Joel sample flips (house rule, only one Dipset affiliate allowed):

Kool G Rap & DJ Polo - Road to the Riches
Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth - Sun Won't Come Out
Snoop Dogg - The Shiznit
Juelz Santana f Cam'ron - You Oughta Know
Stack Bundles - Life's Like a Movie
posted by box at 3:43 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

The only reason I have for hating that song has nothing to do with the song and entirely to do with the fact that this was in primary rotation everywhere all the time when it was popular. MTV was probably playing the video 6x an hour, radio stations had it on, gas stations, grocery stores, malls... It was really inescapable.

It really was inescapable. Inescapable to the point that, weirdly, I falsely remember it coming out about five years before it actually did. I had to look at Wikipedia to confirm when it was actually released.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:52 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Was mildly curious about what they’d shout instead of LEONARD BERNSTEIN. Alas.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:55 PM on June 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

So it's the Forrest Gump of songs, but without the heart or plot?
posted by clawsoon at 3:56 PM on June 28, 2023

”We tried to stop it!”

That is my point, yes. Why was Billy Joel trying to stop Joe DiMaggio? What does he have against Marilyn Monroe? And how is he simultaneously against Doris Day and against Joe McCarthy? Against the Rosenbergs and against the H-Bomb? Is he anti-vaccine? Is he anti-monarchy or just didn’t want the previous British king to have ever died and thus have the crown transition to the next heir in line? What does it say against him that he was opposed to Liberace? And that’s just before the first chorus.
posted by eviemath at 4:03 PM on June 28, 2023 [8 favorites]

There are so many Billy Joel songs I hate more than this one that it almost counts as liking this one. It's pretty much the equivalent of the annual "New Yorker" New Year's poem- it rises and falls with the cleverness of the rhymes and the dissonance of the juxtapositions. You would need a Steven Sondheim to create a deeper current; even as early as "America" Sondheim knew you had to have a thesis and an antithesis that alternate ironically to keep a list song interesting. This song is just things you might remember even if you weren't paying attention and had no idea how, if at all, the things connected in a way that could be termed "a fire". Hmmm. The more I think about this song, the more I hate it.
posted by acrasis at 4:13 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

My deep dislike and strongly resentful beanplating of this song brought to you by having to listen to it Every. Single. Day. for what felts like months on end (but was probably only weeks) in junior high social studies class, yet not actually being taught anything of actual substance about any of the people or events mentioned. Social studies teacher was just a big Billy Joel fan, and thought that having a pop song that mentioned historical people and events would somehow improve students’ interest in social studies by I dunno osmosis or something.

Oh ye gods--not the way to teach the material! My teacher used it as a prompt for individual research essays: pick a thing you don't know about, go write me a page about what you learned. I've also seen the song used for class presentations rather than essays, where the goal is in theory for the students to teach one another, and as a structure for a kind of scavenger hunt where students provide answers to a scavenger hunt but never just like.... without actually showing the kids where to find the stories being referenced. Just playing the song without going through the lyrics is a terrible idea!
posted by sciatrix at 4:13 PM on June 28, 2023

Seconding that the original isn't a bad song at all, but this is pretty awful, the whiny vocals, the non-chronological lyrics, and how it manages to somehow not bring anything new to the table at all, arrangement-wise.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:16 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Why was Billy Joel trying to stop Joe DiMaggio?

I kind of think of Billy Joel as basically the last of the vaudevillians, as confirmed by his sell-out MSG residencies and the success of the musical, and I think that most of his songs would be amazing if you could only hear them live a handful of times in your life, preferably after a couple of beers and with some sort of visuals.

His songs and lyrics would be great if you didn't hear them often enough to really scrutinize them.
posted by smelendez at 4:17 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am sitting
In the morning
At the diner
On the corner


---

Your welcome
posted by allium cepa

doctor

more skewers

STAT
posted by lalochezia at 4:21 PM on June 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

There's way worse music out there than We Didn't Start The Fire and this sequel, surprisingly enough, isn't all that bad. Yeah, they dropped any pretense of chronology or thematic relatedness, but somehow, it's more a reflection on the 90's and 2000's than it really should be.

It could be a loooooooot worse.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 4:22 PM on June 28, 2023

I lived next door to a fraternity for a couple of years when I was in university and in their cups they would often stand around the grill out in their yard and sing all of "We Didn't Start the Fire" together, seemingly from memory, to a fire they had started.

Now, when I tell you that this was a thing they liked to do, from a distance of twenty years give or take, it sounds sort of boyishly charming. I even find it a little charming myself when I see it written out. But I assure you that at the time, peering out my window at 2am to this ungodly serenade, it was possibly the most annoying thing any group of young men could do.

However, now I know there are new depths. They could have written their own, updated version of "We Didn't Start the Fire" and sang THAT to the fire, and that would definitely have been worse. So, that's nice, I'm glad that didn't happen
posted by potrzebie at 4:36 PM on June 28, 2023 [16 favorites]

I like the Billy Joel song.
posted by kensington314 at 4:37 PM on June 28, 2023 [7 favorites]

And how is he simultaneously against Doris Day and against Joe McCarthy? Against the Rosenbergs and against the H-Bomb? Is he anti-vaccine? Is he anti-monarchy or just didn’t want the previous British king to have ever died and thus have the crown transition to the next heir in line?

I don't think the list of things has a coherent politics- what they have in common is they are historical intrusions into the field of the personal - all of them, at some level, are " where you when you heard about...." kinds of events, and I think it again speaks to the fundamental naivete of this song - that the speaker, in first person, is saying about things like "AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz" as if they're bad things they happened to everyone rather than bad things that everyone involved might have done...

For ex, the song very much applies to the lived experience of Bernie Goetz right up until he (Goetz) shows up in the lyrics, which is to say the separation between the " we" of the song, the people to whom politics/history happens as experienced events, and the fire of the song, the figures whose actions constitute history, is rigorously maintained. This is the same attitude of fundamental dominant-social-group entitlement that treats "politics" as an intrusion into personal lives rather than the undergirding structure that makes those personal lives possible - a fundamentally conservative position of maintaining status quo.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 5:00 PM on June 28, 2023 [13 favorites]

I appreciate that the TVTropes page for We Didn't Start the Billy Joel Parodies is itself a parody of that song.
posted by credulous at 5:00 PM on June 28, 2023 [8 favorites]

I was in 8th grade when my teachers played this song for our class. In hindsight I think they really bought into it as A THING. Like it was an important touchstone for us to be aware of.

After listening (with no prompt) they asked us to write a list of things we had heard.

That was one of the most flattering and embarrassing moments in my life. They had us go around and read our lists. I guess it was sort of a pop quiz on unasked-for focus or retention. And most kids listed 3-5 things, a few had maybe 10-12. I had like… fifty. I didn't even know what lots of them were. As I read them, off I watched the class and teachers' reactions go from flat, to impressed, to really impressed, to confused, to bored, back to just boggled that I did the thing I did, like I must be some kind of freak or alien. And I just kind of sputtered out in shame, partly wishing I'd lied and stopped earlier.

So yeah, I know that song really well and have complicated feelings about it. I don't think I'll listen to this, but I am thoroughly enjoying the discussion; thanks!
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:01 PM on June 28, 2023 [24 favorites]

It is my sincerest hope for you kids that no mall emo band of the W era covers "And So It Goes" so you don't have to walk in and discover your mom making out with your best friend's almost recently divorced dad to it.

cringing remembering the time my mom was sad about divorcing my dad & teen me unironically handed her a cassette copy of Tracy Chapman's New Beginnings like "here ya go"
posted by taquito sunrise at 5:01 PM on June 28, 2023 [11 favorites]

Mod note: More of a wicker man if you prefer to go the auto-da-fé route.

EXECUTIONERS
Auto-da-fé? What's an auto-da-fé?

[TORQUEMADA]
It's what you oughtn't to do but you do anyway


I've been waiting for this setup for 42 years.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 5:07 PM on June 28, 2023 [10 favorites]

If the thesis is that it was always burning since the world's been turning, then the song should be rhyming bible stories and/or geologic pre-history.
posted by nobody at 5:08 PM on June 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

Don't even get me started on Life is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me).
posted by fairmettle at 5:10 PM on June 28, 2023 [7 favorites]

Did somebody say Rick Roll?
posted by Artw at 5:27 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ark, snakes, Cain and Abel
Tectonic plates are stable
posted by box at 5:31 PM on June 28, 2023 [10 favorites]

child 1 "Grandmother, tell us the tales and legends of your days."
child 2 'Oh yes! Tell us...tell us the story of Harambe again! Pleeeease!'
posted by bartleby at 5:31 PM on June 28, 2023

As an old Millennial, I’d like to point out that Pete Wentz was born in 1979 and is therefore Gen X. We won’t claim him!
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 5:45 PM on June 28, 2023 [7 favorites]

Pete Wentz Explains Why Fall Out Boy’s Updated “We Didn’t Start The Fire” Isn’t Chronological And Doesn’t Mention COVID

As to why no COVID? “It’s like, that’s all anybody talked… You know what I mean? I don’t know. It felt like there was a couple of things that felt like a little on the nose. And then there were a couple of things where it was like … Bush V. Gore, we needed the rhyme.”

*rolls eyes* DUDE YOU GOTTA FUCKING MENTION IT.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:55 PM on June 28, 2023 [12 favorites]

Maybe it's just that I never was more than occasionally exposed to the song (the only radio I was listening to at the time was WHFS and my college station), but I generally find it fun. Definitely an odd hill to die on as Worst Song Ever.
posted by tavella at 5:56 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

RFK, anti-vax
These are undisputed facts!
posted by box at 6:00 PM on June 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

1: WDStF fails because it doesn't have a good crowd participation line, such as the previously mentioned LEONARD! BERNSTEIN! or Sweet Caroline's BA BA BAA , or its been ONE WEEK etc.
The reason you can get away with eye rolling groan inducing mediocrities on the Long Roadtrip Playlist is that while they may not like the song, people love it when the whole car does the little claps every time Texas is mentioned in that Steve Miller song. Face it you love that shit.

2: where WDStF succeeds is in being one of the more complex versions of 'pop song that scratches the itch that used to have people memorizing epic poems and reciting them at drinking parties'. Like the songs above , and more (slightly) modern ones; for instance
I bet if you could get a group of 35 year olds together and feed them enough Smirnoff Ice, you could find out that a large proportion of them are still capable of jumping up and down and shouting ALL the words to Mr. Brightside at each other.

Its the ancient oral tradition. Dense scansion lyrics and booze. You can sometimes pin someone down to their subculture in time and place, if their exposure to it was such that they know the fireside sagas of their tribe.

well enough that they can complete this:
Okay
Here's the situation
My parents went away on a weeks vacation
and
They left the keys to the brand new Porsche
~
posted by bartleby at 6:01 PM on June 28, 2023 [11 favorites]

The Billy Joel song is bad, but at least it was original. This one is just...the same fucking song. Different events listed that took, what? All of 30 minutes to write? Hell, ChatGPT probably wrote this cover. I did listen to a full 30 seconds, so give me a pat on the back.
posted by zardoz at 6:08 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

That ... was worse than I expected. And I was expecting it to be bad.

What ... did I just listen to? I am truly confused this was something someone actually wrote and set to music.
posted by edencosmic at 6:38 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I didn't hate it appreciably more or less than the original. Well done, Fallout Boys!

I went on Bandcamp and found an electropop rendition of Faith No More's "We Care A Lot", which I think is a far superior version of the "list of a bunch of shit you might remember" song. Maybe it's just because I, too, care about Transformers because they're more than meets the eye.
posted by egypturnash at 6:56 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

the "list of a bunch of shit you might remember" song

Well you know my comics convention karaoke choice for this .
posted by Artw at 7:01 PM on June 28, 2023

I like the original, and I don't hate this Tumblr-feed remake. It's fine? I liked the Ever Given joke and the RDJ Iron Man reference, and 'Prince and the Queen die' is cute. I always appreciate acknowledgement of Texas's failing infrastructure.

But the rhyming is real bad in spots, and it's hard to take it seriously when it doesn't mention Covid at all. 'Vaccine' is right there in the original, boys.
posted by mersen at 7:03 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

For me the "Fuck Billy Joel" moment

Christie Brinkley is on Metafilter!


I believe the proper syntax is “Welcome to Metafilter, Ms. Brinkley!”
posted by TedW at 7:05 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

tangential, two silly "list" songs i like are Lords of Acid's LSD = Truth and deadmau5's Professional Greifers
posted by glonous keming at 7:21 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

"How does Hamilton the short-tempered
Protean creator of the Coast Guard
Founder of the New York Post
Ardently abuse his cab’net post
Destroy his reputation?
Welcome, folks, to

-The Adams administration"
posted by clavdivs at 7:26 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

For actually decent epic songs to memorize the lyrics of, that relates a large swath of American pop culture history, Don Maclean’s American Pie is vastly, vastly superior.

Or Alice’s Restaurant - that’s a good one to memorize and sing/recite. Plus it has an actual narrative! And clever internal self-referents.

And wow, not even original: Billy Joel definitely ripped off the idea and the tune from that 1974 song that fairmettle linked to, which is as much better than Billy Joel’s song as folks seem to be indicating Billy Joel’s song is as compared to the Fall Out Boy rewrite.
posted by eviemath at 7:43 PM on June 28, 2023

I do not have a taste for Billy Joel.

But I feel like if there was a person who had lost the ability to talk the way most of us do at a very early age but they could still sing, so that they grew up learning to use singing for everything the rest is of us use ordinary spoken language for, their speech would be indistinguishable from Billy Joel songs.

When I listen to him it’s not like singing is second nature to him, singing seems to be the fundamental language of his thought processes.

A little more influence from Jazz might have made all the difference in my ability to appreciate his work.
posted by jamjam at 8:06 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

I do wonder at times when people get their Billy Joel hate on; Which Billy Joel?
Because there are several flavors. The young Long Island lounge singer Piano Man era? the Manhattan Disco Billy of The Stranger? The middle aged American songbook Doo-Wop of For the Longest Time? Etc.

Like if someone said they hate Madonna, I'd ask which Madonna? The Lucky Star age? Vogue era Madonna? Ray of Light? Or all of it, categorically?
posted by bartleby at 9:36 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

You can go back to sitting there alone in your electric chair and next time we won’t tell you any dirty jokes until you smile. Billy Joel and I going on a road trip in my car with a new set of white wall tires until we find some rock and roll with an uptown girl and then we’ll go out on fishing the Down Easter Alexa and so it goes mother fuckers.
posted by interogative mood at 9:53 PM on June 28, 2023 [7 favorites]

Who is the "we" and what is the "fire"?

It doesn't make sense based on the list.

What is the we fighting against? More lists? More songs? History?
posted by perhapses at 10:00 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

I like Billy Joel, my favourite song is Lonely Boy.
posted by Pendragon at 10:25 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

If Family Guy was a song
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 10:32 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

Why is Fermi's Paradox in the lyrics? "Fermi died of cancer in 1954", and he famously asked, "where is everybody?" in 1950. Why is it in a list of news stories from 1989 to present?
posted by ecco at 11:42 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have the original memorized, and I'm going to see Billy Joel play live in Hyde Park next Friday. I intend to sing along loudly to every stupid word.
posted by Optamystic at 4:31 AM on June 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

I have the original memorized, and I'm going to see Billy Joel play live in Hyde Park next Friday. I intend to sing along loudly to every stupid word.
posted by Optamystic at 7:31 AM on June 29 [+] [!]

Sounds like premeditation
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 4:45 AM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm not listening to the song because I'm already precariously close to getting it stuck in my head for the next week. But I will admit to a soft spot for Pete Wentz not because of his music (I'm too old for Fall Out Boy) but because he's childhood friends with a guy who runs a cat rescue/cat cafe here in Chicago, and he directs a good amount of his attention and money to help them rescue cats. I gotta love that.
posted by misskaz at 5:14 AM on June 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

I like Billy Joel. There, I said it. WDSTF is a product of it's time and doesn't need a clumsy update.

However, in my mind, the real answer to WDSTF is Purple Toupee.
posted by jclarkin at 5:52 AM on June 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

In these shoes?
I don't think so.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 6:51 AM on June 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Not only do I unabashedly love Billy Joel (Summer Highland Falls is a f'n classic, and don't get me started on Prelude/Angry Young Man) but my 15 year old just went with me to see him live and cried when he played Piano Man. I reject your collective hate of one of the finest songwriters of the 20th Century.

WDStF is, however...fine. As a "listical" song, it's at least as good as others in the genre. The new one misses the mark in a lot of cases (I can't stand the fact that they didn't even TRY for chronology). But FoB is fun, clever pop music, and if this is your yum, I won't yuck it.
posted by griffey at 6:57 AM on June 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'd forgotten about this listicle song. We Want Your Soul from Freeland
posted by hippybear at 7:02 AM on June 29, 2023

I finally listened to the song - it's a solid attempt. The lack of actual chronology in it makes it more of a muddle than a timeline in the way the original is, though. I think part of the point of the original is not just "hey, stuff happened" but "wow, all this stuff was happening at about the same time and things are happening in approximate order"
posted by rmd1023 at 7:11 AM on June 29, 2023

Well, I think if I hadn’t been forced to listen to the song so much, it would have been a forgettable meh song that I wouldn’t care about much one way or the other. But it sounds like quite a few of us did have listening imposed on us in social studies classes or something.
posted by eviemath at 7:33 AM on June 29, 2023

I am sitting
In the morning
At the diner
On the corner


---

Your welcome

Your a monster.
posted by 1adam12 at 7:40 AM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

the real criminal song of Billy Joel's is "Uptown Girl" imo because just typing that out has resulted in that stupid, stupid song getting lodged in my head for the next few hours

This "Uptown Girl" song? It's about an uptown girl. She's been living in her white-bred world as long as anyone with hot blood can. And now she's looking for a downtown man. That's what I am.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:27 AM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Uh. There’s certainly an overlap between “white bread” and “white-bred”, but that puts a markedly different spin on the song. As does subbing “hot blood” for “that much”.
posted by eviemath at 8:35 AM on June 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

(I may be wrong about that second lyric though.)
posted by eviemath at 8:36 AM on June 29, 2023

Can we do Pressure, but update the lyrics to be about submarines and billionaires?

Umm, do we need to update?

Don't ask for help
You're all alone
Pressure
You'll have to answer
To your own
Pressure

posted by kirkaracha at 8:41 AM on June 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

For the record, I don't hate Billy Joel at all. I also think that "Summer, Highland Falls" is a beautiful song (I also have a real soft spot for "Vienna"), and I have 100% embarrassed friends by singing New York State of Mind at Karaoke. Solid preference for 70s Billy Joel to 80s Billy Joel.

I even have a lot of affection for punk rock covers of Billy Joel songs

Some songs aren't for every one. I mean, full disclosure

I am sitting
In the morning
At the diner
On the corner


I owned at least one Suzanne Vega album, if we're laying all our cards on the table .
posted by thivaia at 10:37 AM on June 29, 2023

I did not know that there was still such a thing as Fall Out Boy, but after reading this synopsis I would not feel bad if these boys fell out of something.
posted by delfin at 10:51 AM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

I owned at least one Suzanne Vega album

99.9F° is a good album, there, I said it.
posted by AzraelBrown at 11:05 AM on June 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

>> I'd just like to ask everybody to take a moment to reflect that we built this city. We built this city on rock 'n' roll.

> Your actions have been reported to the Hague.

Now we're knee-deep in the hoopla
posted by Rat Spatula at 12:37 PM on June 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

As truly embarrassing the album Knee Deep In The Hoopla is for Starship in the context of their lineage, it is really a totally solid Eighties pop album and it yielded two songs everyone in this thread knows by heart and that's something.
posted by hippybear at 1:46 PM on June 29, 2023

Glad I wasn’t the only one, cinnamonduff, to say “Hey, the Suez gets a second look in. How nice for them, time being a flat circle, things of that nature.”
posted by MarchHare at 4:57 PM on June 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ohhh I was wondering why my NPR-listening friend was asking me where I “stand” on this song. I was like, it’s nowhere near So Much (For) Stardust quality but it’s got a beat and some fun lines? I had no idea the 40+ crowd was so mad about it. This is so funny.

Also FOB covers are usually kind of “we are obviously just fucking around and having fun” garbage (affectionate) so I don’t know why anyone’s surprised. Have some wine and listen to Baby Annihilation or I Am My Own Muse and maybe you’ll calm down.
posted by brook horse at 5:00 PM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh! How MetaFilter has changed - 2012, 2018
posted by unliteral at 6:05 PM on June 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

plum poem, megathread
period for someone dead
surely this and plate of beans
sitcom with paint roller scene
posted by dephlogisticated at 6:24 PM on June 29, 2023 [9 favorites]

I thought uptown girl was about his courtship with Christy Brinkley and her being rather posh and upper class while he was sort of blue collar Long Island guy. I didn’t notice the hot blood line.
posted by interogative mood at 6:54 PM on June 29, 2023

If Family Guy was a song

"I Didn't Poop These Items"
posted by credulous at 9:02 PM on June 29, 2023

The chaotic, nonchronological listing is part of the twenty-first century zeitgeist. As Bo Burnham has observed:

Welcome to the internet, put your cares aside
Here's a tip for straining pasta, here's a nine-year-old who died
We got movies, and doctors, and fantasy sports
And a bunch of colored pencil drawings
Of all the different characters in Harry Potter fucking each other

[...]

Here's a healthy breakfast option, you should kill your mom
Here's why women never fuck you, here's how you can build a bomb
Which Power Ranger are you? Take this quirky quiz
Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids

Could I interest you in everything all of the time?
A little bit of everything, all of the time
Apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime
Anything and everything, all of the time

posted by fantabulous timewaster at 6:31 AM on June 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

Where Joel’s day-zero cringegasm (take it from me, folks — I was in high school at the time) at least makes its references chronologically, Fall Out Boy’s update is all over the map.

I'm not going to defend either version but I do find this aspect of the Fall Out Boy upgrade (downgrade?) fascinating as it correlates with my experience that time no longer flows chronologically. It's hard to pin it to a particular historical point, but the switch was definitely in by the time Trump got elected.
posted by philip-random at 8:34 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Pat Finnerty (the What Makes this Song Stink guy) did a live chat for this song, and quipped that the stars mentioned should get together and talk about what they were placed next to.

Kurt Cobain: I got Pokemon.
Lebron James: I got ISIS


And that most of the lyrics probably came from scrolling through TikTok and Netflix, and includes several shoutouts to his friends (Black Parade which is a My Chemical Romance album, Tom Delonge and aliens).
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:58 AM on June 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Fall Out Boy’s reimagined version mentions everything from Queen Elizabeth II’s death to the September 11 terrorist attacks, but Wentz noted that they weren’t worried about following a timeline. “It’s just a little bit out of order, but it is what it is,” he told Apple Music. “Listen, we wanted the Internet to still have something to complain about.”

HANG ON THIS IS HILARIOUS. WE ARE ALL PART OF WENTZ’S WEIRD META ART PIECE ACTUALLY
posted by brook horse at 5:00 PM on June 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

I wouldn't have watched it if it weren't for the Internet complaining about it, so... success?
posted by clawsoon at 5:22 PM on June 30, 2023

NYT: ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ Is Updated for a New Generation
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:13 AM on July 1, 2023

> It is my sincerest hope for you kids that no mall emo band of the W era covers "And So It Goes"

I didn't know this song so I watched (part of) a video of it and realized it sounds exactly like all the plodding and awkward songs in Singing the Journey.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:56 AM on July 2, 2023

Mikelieman:

This is the tenth time you have made the claim that Billy Joel's drug addiction drove his bass player to kill himself, and not once in all that time have you come up with any proof of your claim.

It's perfectly okay for you to just, like, not like Billy Joel any more, you didn't need to make up a ridiculous drama-queen reason for it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:11 PM on July 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

'Definitely don't expect other vids like this but I needed to get this fixation out somehow and i think it’s very cool and interesting so here y’all go :)'
posted by box at 7:47 AM on July 11, 2023