We didn’t start the fire

A song that was heavily inspired by the political situation, in his liner notes of The Piano Man you can find and excerpt where Joel explains how this song was written after having a conversation with John Lennon’s son Sean. He rattles off a list of events surrounding the cold war era with repercussions that his generation had inherited as the result.
This is not the first time this rapid lyrics style has been used. REM used it in their track “It’s the end of the world as we know it” and even Bob Dylan used this technique effectively in his song “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. This has worked out well because there is no ‘real melody’. Joel says that the reason this is because he wrote the lyric himself, something he does not normally do. In an interview with Billboard Magazine he said “It’s terrible musically “
Despite what he says about the song, Joel admitted on the Howard Stern Show that he does not dislike it and though it is not one of his favorites he often struggles to recall the words during live shows. He says that he even searches the audience for cues as they mouth the words. Many have asked about the possibility of a sequel to which Joel replies he has no intention to do it.
Possibly one of the biggest critics of the song was Blender Magazine in their article “Run for your life! It’s the 50 worst songs ever!” Coming 41 out of the top 50, the magazine reproaches Joel for attempting to fit the history of an entire era into a mere 4 minutes although it is almost 5 minutes long. They also said that the events were rambled off in no particular order, downplaying the significance of the Tiananmen Square Massacre by integrating it into the same line where he mentions “Rock and Roller Cola Wars”.
A hilarious version of the song, sung in the voice of Homer Simpson, was also used in one of the Simpson’s episodes as a reminder of conspiracies of the past.
Joel’s song is indeed a lesson in history, discovered an elementary school teacher from Menasha. She took the song and extracted themes for her fifth graders exercises back in 1990. When the record label got wind of this, they decided to hand out 40 000 cassettes with the song as well as a 10 minute long dialogue by Joel himself.