Fall Out Boy Update Lyrics on ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ Cover

Fall Out Boy have just released their cover of Billy Joel’s hit song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” but with one major catch — they’ve updated all of the lyrics to cover newsworthy items from 1989 through the present day in 2023.

The move is, frankly, genius. It’s the type of thing a hundred other bands are probably kicking themselves wondering why they didn’t think of that first. To the victor go the spoils and Fall Out Boy are now on the receiving end of heaps of positive praise for this clever cover.

“This song needs to be rewritten for every generation in the future because the fire has always been and will always be,” one comment on YouTube neatly sums it up.

“We Didn’t Start the Fire” was originally released in 1989 and appears on Joel’s 11th studio album, Storm Front. The track details 118 major events that had taken place in the musician’s life from his birth in 1949 through the release date.

In turn, Fall Out Boy effectively offer up a natural successor, calling out memorable social/cultural/political events, as well as name-dropping celebrities of all sorts (Hollywood, sports, royalty, politics, business tycoons, etc) to create a three-and-a-half-minute guide to the greatest hits of the news, both good and bad.

While fans of all ages will likely see a great deal of events and names they recognize, this cover perhaps best speaks to those of Fall Out Boy singer Patrick Stump’s generation — those millennials (people born between 1982 and 1994) who seem to get blamed for all of society’s problems these days, even when critics mistakenly confuse Gen Z traits for millennials.

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“I thought about this song a lot when I was younger,” says Stump, “All these important people and events — some that disappeared into the sands of time — others that changed the world forever. So much has happened in the span of the last 34 years — we felt like a little system update might be fun. Hope you like our take on it.”

Read the updated lyrics directly below and hear Fall Out Boy’s cover version further down the page. And if you’d like to compare the new version with the original, you can find the lyrics to Billy Joel’s song beneath all that.

Lyrics to Fall Out Boy’s Cover of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”

Captain Planet
Arab Spring
LA Riots Rodney King
Deep fakes
Earthquakes
Iceland volcano
Oklahoma City bomb
Kurt Cobain
Pokémon
Tiger Woods
MySpace
Monsanto GMOs

Harry Potter
Twilight
Michael Jackson dies
Nuclear accident Fukushima Japan
Crimean peninsula
Cambridge analytica
Kim Jong Un
Robert Downey Jr Iron Man

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’re trying to fight it

More war in Afghanistan
Cubs go all the way again
Obama
Spielberg
Explosion Lebanon
Unabomber
Bobbit, John
Bombing Boston marathon
Balloon Boy
War on terror
Qanon

Trump gets impeached twice
Polar bears got no ice
Fyre fest
Black Parade
Michael Phelps
Y2K
Boris Johnson
Brexit
Kanye West
Taylor Swift
Stranger Things
Tiger King
Ever given suez

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’re trying to fight it

Sandy Hook
Columbine
Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice
ISIS
Lebron James
Shinzo Abe blown away
Meghan Markle
George Floyd
Burj Khalifa
Metroid
Fermi paradox
Venus and Serena

Michael Jordan 23
YouTube killed MTV
Spongebob
Golden State Killer caught
Michael Jordan 45
Woodstock ‘99
Keaton Batman
Bush v Gore
I can’t take it anymore

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’re trying to fight it

Elon Musk
Kaepernick
Texas failed electric grid
Jeff Bezos
Climate change
White rhino goes extinct
Great pacific garbage patch
Tom DeLonge and aliens
Mars rover
Avatar
Self-driving electric cars
S-S-S-R-Is
Prince and the Queen die
World Trade
Second plane
What else do I have to say?

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
But when we are gone
It will still burn on, and on, and on
And on, and on, and on, and on, and on

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning since the world’s been turning

Fall Out Boy, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (Billy Joel cover with new lyrics)

Billy Joel, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” Lyrics (via AZ Lyrics)

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

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

Joseph 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

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

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, 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
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo

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

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
J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say?

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

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

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
But when we are gone
It will still burn on and on and on and on
And on and on and on and on…

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

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

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

Billy Joel, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” Music Video

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