Taylor Swift, “Stranger Things,” Elon Musk and former President Barack Obama are among the many name-checks in Fall Out Boy’s remake of “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” Billy Joel’s 1989 hit.
Released Wednesday, Fall Out Boy’s version is intended as a “little system update” to Joel’s original, which referenced 118 people, events and other things from 1949 to 1989 in rapid fire. The new rendition picks up where Joel’s left off, highlighting headlines from 1989 to 2023.
“I thought about this song a lot when I was younger,” the band ― which consists of drummer Andy Hurley, singer Patrick Stump, guitarist Joe Trohman and bassist Pete Wentz ― said in a statement on its social media accounts.
“So much has happened in the span of the last 34 years,” the band wrote. “We felt like a little system update might be fun. Hope you like our take on it.”
Listen to Fall Out Boy’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”:
The new “We Didn’t Start the Fire” has been divisive among music critics ― which is not especially surprising for a song featuring couplets like: “[Donald] Trump gets impeached twice/Polar bears got no ice.”
One point of contention is that Joel’s references were written in mostly chronological order, whereas Fall Out Boy’s are not. Also, the new version strangely omits any mention of COVID-19, the deadliest pandemic in U.S. history.
“Somehow, Fall Out Boy made an all-time bad song even worse,” a Polygon critic wrote, while Slate described the new lyrics as reading “like a Google doc thrown together by a couple of elder millennials in 15 minutes.”
Many listeners on social media, however, were more forgiving.
“I LOVE the choice of putting the events in non-chronological order,” one person wrote on Twitter. “It speaks to how chaotic the past 30 years have been. A whirlwind, a blur. Everything feels like it’s happening all at once.”
Joel has yet to comment publicly on the remake. That said, the Piano Man has never ranked the song ― which was famously parodied by the cast of “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019 ― among his best works.
“I think the one time I didn’t write the music first was ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ and I think it shows, because it’s terrible musically,” he told Billboard in 2009. “It’s like a mosquito buzzing around your head.”
Questionable cover songs aside, Fall Out Boy’s members have been experiencing a musical resurgence in recent months. The band released its eighth studio album, “So Much (for) Stardust,” in March and kicked off a world tour at Chicago’s Wrigley Field last week.