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Fall Out Boy surprised fans with a new song this week – but not in the way they expected.
Although the band only released their latest album, So Much (for) Stardust back in March, they have just dropped a new cover song.
Instead of putting their own twist on a modern track as many rock bands would, they took on a classic hit from Billy Joel: We Didn’t Start the Fire.
The 1989 song originally spoke about political and cultural touchstones that were extremely relevant at the time.
Instead, Fall Out Boy have changed up the entirety of the song’s lyrics in their own way, and thrown in references to modern celebrities and events, including Meghan Markle and the Columbine school shooting massacre.
Billy Joel’s original lyrics rushed through references, saying: “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.”
Fall Out Boy’s version of the track hits on people their younger fans will know extremely well.
Their version of the lyrics read: “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.”
They later croon: “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.”
Fall Out Boy released a statement alongside the song, where they backed up their thoughts behind the changes.
The band wrote on Twitter: “I thought about this song a lot when I was younger. All these important people and events – some that disappeared into the sands of time – others that changed the world forever.”
They added: “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.”
Billy Joel’s original version of the song went straight to number one in the US Billboard Hot 100 when it hit radio stations in 1989.
It went on to go multiplatinum throughout the USA and United Kingdom.
Joel once recalled he got the idea for the song after meeting a 21-year-old friend of Sean Ono Lennon (John Lennon’s son) who told him: “It’s a terrible time to be 21!”
Joel replied: “Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y’know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful.”
