I forget what year it was, but on the first day of high school, I was assigned to a classroom that had the lyrics to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” lining the walls. For reasons I never learned because I would never see this teacher again, he had them circling across the upper half of the room. Maybe it was some lesson on what history meant to him. As confusing as the situation was, I found myself charmed by the ability to see these words. It made me think about what they meant and wondered how they locked together to make up our 20th century.
There’s not much of a story to it. I would be gone from that class within 15 minutes to start that semester. However, it’s a reminder of the permanence Joel’s silly listicle has on us. Even as he admits that the song is lacking, possibly because it’s a ballad form of “Ready Player One,” it’s hard for me to not break out a few lines. It’s not to seem impressive but because of how silly the whole ordeal is. Who doesn’t randomly quote “JFK blown away, what else do I have to say?” It’s a clever lyric though the more you think about it, the more it’s just insensitively designed as a trivial pump-up anthem. Those who have no idea who JFK is will likely not understand the severity of that moment. I grew up with teachers romantically claiming “We all knew where we were the day we learned John F. Kennedy died.” Still, this is a strong candidate for the smartest dumb song out there. You’ll learn a lot of words, but unless these names mean something to you, it’s a bunch of gibberish.
That’s a small reason that I was a bit confused by the recent decision to have Fall Out Boy do a “cover” of the song. In a time where culture is so self-referential that we’ve broken the space-time continuum, it’s hard to imagine the song holding any weight. Despite being initially sold as a cover, it doesn’t take long to learn that this is actually an “update” that covers the period where Joel left off. A lot has happened between 1989 and 2023 (an arbitrary cut-off if there ever was one), so it makes sense to throw everything into a song for the old time capsule. We’re preserving this for when Gen Alpha comes of age and asks what Gen-X, now in their 70s, was up to.
I’m a bit conflicted about how to really assess Fall Out Boy’s 2.0 take. On the one hand, I believe with my entire soul that this song will become a B-Side to a storied career that nobody remembers. It’s an updated version of that time Madonna covered Don McLean’s “American Pie” and realized that some generational ditties don’t translate to nostalgia. It’s not that Fall Out Boy are just cribbing from Billy Joel, but the effort to work as additional verses creates some painful forced rhyme. I don’t believe that there’s an issue with wanting to make a song LIKE “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” but I’d rather have seen them work with a more organic melody. If you’re all that precious, you can slap the chorus in, but trying to fit half of these references into that stanza structure is a real dumpster fire of an achievement.
However, there is a part of me that thinks trying to summarize the past 34 years of world events is an admirable goal that they achieve with similar success to Joel. It’s not a great listen, but the form was always arbitrary. This is about nodding your head and saying “That’s familiar!” These are buzzwords slammed next to each other without a care. Everything that has defined the modern era benefits from how we process information now. It’s all blurred together, recycled, and remixed. The old adage that time has no meaning feels pertinent to appreciating Fall Out Boy’s take because those aware of chronology will be the most offended by this piece. It’s so disorganized that I think it becomes Dadaist art, itself making a commentary on how the fire has swallowed us up and etched away at our sense of reason. This is a fever dream of a track, and I think its only longevity is in how fascinating its connections are.
To start at the beginning, signs aren’t too good when the first two references are Captain Planet and Arab Spring. As Genius will be quick to point out, that’s a 20-year difference between the environmental TV series and a major political event. With that said, these are hyper-specific moments in history that at least start things off on a recognizable footing. We can look these up and have a good idea of what’s going on. Even references to the Los Angeles riots and Rodney King have a familiarity with how the world was shaped. However, things quickly fall off the rails by the sixth reference. Despite the specificity, we’re left to question what Fall Out Boy means when they sing “Earthquake.”
The gag answer I’d give is that they meant Tyler the Creator’s “Earfquake” song and that was their way of sneaking him in there. After all, they found Tom Delonge worthy of a shoutout despite not even being the most prominent member of Blink-182 anymore. Given that the 20th and 21st century has seen an increase in earthquakes, one has to ask… WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? This is where the lack of order fails defenses. I get it if you want to argue that it’s an ongoing phenomenon, but there are so many that could’ve been referenced. Given that a later line goes “Nuclear accident, Fukushima, Japan” there are ways around the rhyme structure. Instead, earthquake is followed up with “Iceland volcano” which I don’t think is connected. Alas, the verse ends with the most confounding piece of over-explaining things with “Robert Downey Jr., Iron Man.” Sure, Iron Man is a prominent pop culture icon now, but RDJ by himself doesn’t feel warranted of his own mention. Even something like “Avengers Endgame, Iron Man” would resonate more with the idea of the piece.
I don’t wish to break down every line, but this is a mess. After listening to 2.0 several times, I revisited Billy Joel’s original to see if it would have a similar impact. When compared to his other work, it’s definitely lesser. However, I found myself able to follow the logic easier. I may have not understood every reference, but the icons he used were grounded in a lasting legacy. Also, most of the verses had a way of landing on the right syllable. Basically, there was a transition between both that built on an idea that kept momentum building. Fall Out Boy are so enamored with this song that they stuck to the melodic structure to a fault. Suddenly they were adding syllables that sound ridiculous instead of natural. It comes in references like “Bobbit, John” where you realize their desperation to make this work. It isn’t just that some of these references are ill-conceived and even ephemeral, but it may be difficult for the listener to even understand what’s being said. If you’re not watching the lyric video, how are you going to recognize that John Bobbit’s name isn’t part of the next line “Bombing, Boston Marathon”? Language slowly ceases meaning throughout the song and along with it goes reason.
Before I continue into the ways that the song is a misguided first draft, I thought that I would say that some of the correlations throughout this are inspired and kind of mirror Joel’s original. “Prince and the Queen dies” is a nice way to tie in two prominent cultural deaths while also recognizing Joel’s line about how “England’s got a new queen.” Also, their willingness to reference “Cubs go all the way again” is a nice tie into baseball anomalies. At its core, there are ideas about history mirroring itself that I actually think work if you know where to look. However, they’re not done in any way that makes you know where to focus. The most ironic example of this is when they mention “Shinzo Abe blown away” which, structurally, is designed like the aforementioned JFK line. However, it’s not the punchline to a verse but somewhere towards the start. It’s underwhelming. The one time they get it right is “Bush v. Gore, I can’t take it anymore.” Again, it’s an example of how this could’ve worked like gangbusters if allowed to be its own beast.
If there’s one verse that will go down in infamy, it’s the third. So many bases have been covered so far, but Fall Out Boy were saving the bulk of their political commentary for this section. Again, there’s nothing wrong with a song like this mentioning “Sandy Hook, Columbine” alongside “Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice.” These are all relevant tragedies. You can see the connections of how violence has changed our landscape. However, things slowly fall apart as they put “ISIS, LeBron James” on the same line. While it can be argued that James is an activist for civil rights, that would be a stretch given that later lines would recognize Michael Jordan TWICE (meanwhile, Kobe Bryant is nowhere to be seen). Again, nothing is wrong with James being in this song, but he’s sandwiched between a terrorist group and the famously misplaced “Shinzo Abe blown away.” While not as terrible as it being linked by “Meghan Markle” to “George Floyd,” that again is not as terrible as comparing one of modern history’s most notorious innocent murders with the video game Metroid. It’s quite something to have a tragic death that leads to national activism be tied to an 80s piece of entertainment. Suddenly “JFK blown away” doesn’t seem so insensitive.
There’s not much else that I wish to touch on with the song, though this version makes me realize the limits of approaching music this way. Not only is it a failure because of how much it tries to be an addendum to the previous, but it’s also disorganized and focuses on topics that aren’t always that relevant. Sure, one can argue the disjointed production reflects how chaotic the times are, but then you must consider how vast things are now. It would be difficult to hear everything of note referenced here. In fact, one noteworthy thing that’s missing is COVID-19. When asked why that was, the band suggested that it was too on the nose… as if mentioning substantial pieces of history was supposed to prioritize My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade” over millions dying from a once in a generation virus.
Again, there’s so many corners where you must ask “What about this?” To give Billy Joel credit, he actually covered his bases by at least mentioning prominent figures from every field. You’re left in 2.0 wondering if Fall Out Boy just doesn’t care about certain things or if it’s a giant oversight. What about Obergefell? Kobe Bryant? Game Boy? Lin-Manuel Miranda/Hamilton? The AIDS Crisis? Nipplegate or Deflategate? Titanic (1998)? Frozen (2013)? Minions? Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee? The housing crisis of 2008? Hurricane Katrina? Immigration crisis? Beyonce? American Idol? Don’t Say Gay? THERE’S SO MUCH MORE THAT YOU COULD’VE MENTIONED. Why is Fyre Fest more important than those?
It's understandable to forget some of those things, but songs like this create a thankless task. You’re left recognizing that things are so big that you could never do it all justice. Given that so many lines have unnecessary fat on them, you can’t help but think about how much better this song could be. It’s maybe why I prefer more obtuse successors to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” like R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” or Bowling For Soup’s “1985.” They may not cover as many bases as Joel, but they still contextualize history in interesting new ways that make you notice how culture has changed. At its core, that’s what I believe Fall Out Boy was trying to achieve. Instead of striking out on their own, borrowing caused them to be compared to an original that was in itself silly and kind of pointless. It’s still fun, but mostly because you notice that Joel tried to make history come to life without confusing the order.
I don’t believe that Fall Out Boy’s latest will be a masterpiece. It’s not likely to line the ceiling of a high school classroom. At least, I hope not for the sake of seeing ISIS next to LeBron James. It just looks awful. Maybe that’s what they needed to do. Maybe writing it out would’ve caused them to notice that some of this isn’t going to fly. Half of the connections make sense and I don’t fault them for trying, but given that they’re an experienced band with almost 20 years making Top 40 hits, they should’ve been able to notice when things didn’t sound right. It’s nice to be reminded of what came before, but I really don’t know that I needed Tiger King to be my connection to Netflix and the streaming wars. There are so many better examples. The same goes for a lot of this.
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