Top Ten Songs Mentioning the Beatles: We Didn’t Start the Fire (#8)

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What a beautiful day after all the storms! They say we have a day and a half of calm weather before more storms. Spring came late, I guess. This is normally what we have in April and May. Oh, well, I’ll relax with music. Here’s another song that mentions the Beatles, and you’re probably not the least bit surprised this showed up. #8: We Didn’t Start the Fire - Billy Joel Do you know why so many people loathe history in school? You spend a year learning about things with a dry-as-the-desert textbook. This song gives you 40 years of American history in five minutes, and in a great way! Plus, there are things in this song that you probably weren’t taught about in school, like the “children of thalidomide.” Amid the history you get a healthy dose of popular culture through the decades. Some of these things are funny, in hindsight. “British politician sex” is about the sex scandal involving British Secretary of State for War John Profumo’s affair with a 19-year-old. We shrug at that: gee, what politician in America hasn’t had an affair?! (Of course, there was more to it than just that: the woman he was having the affair with was rumored to be an also having an affair with a Soviet military officer.) There’s a lot of things that seem current amid the history. Sometimes you’d think we aren’t fighting the fire; and, worse, we seem to enjoy being burned repeatedly by it. We Didn’t Start the Fire Written by Billy Joel Recorded by Billy Joel From Storm Front, 1989 BEATLE REFERENCE LYRICS: British Beatlemania