Fall Out Boy released a cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" Wednesday. But with the song, the band did start a fire of some sort, with social media users sharing very mixed reactions to the remake, including some burning reviews.
The cover, which has updated lyrics to include newsworthy events from 1989 - when Joel's original released - through 2023, includes a slew of references like "World Trade," "Brexit," "Stranger Things," "Taylor Swift," "Obama," "Columbine," "Sandy Hook," "Twilight," "Tiger King" and "Michael Jordan 23" plus "Michael Jordan 45," among others.
Some notable happenings that called for major headlines in that time period, including the COVID-19 pandemic, were not mentioned.
And there are some caveats. The group said that the events span covered is 1989 through 2023. But Nintendo game "Metroid" mentioned was released originally in 1986 in Japan and in 1988 stateside — that said, there have been plenty of iterations of the game released since so we'll cut the band some slack.
Guitarist Joe Trohman:Fall Out Boy member breaks from band saying 'My mental health has rapidly deteriorated' Fall Out Boy, shown here performing at the 2023 NHL All-Star Game, has released a cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."
Fall Out Boy shared the news of their release on Instagram.
"I thought about this song a lot when I was younger," Fall Out Boy wrote. "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…"
And some listeners really did like their take.
"Never ordered something so fast!" Instagram user @jamieperry_x commented on Fall Out Boy's post.
"Yeah, well. @falloutboy save the day again," @anni_starship tweeted. "Will be jamming to this for the rest of the day! Can’t wait to see them twice in November."
Others contributed their takes on what was included in terms of "newsworthy" events starting conversations in Fall Out Boy's post's comment section.
"How’d you guys recreate We Didn’t Start The Fire and not mention the pandemic in the last few verses," commented @bee_etta. Another user, @defyallthegravity, responded with their interpretation of the lyrics: "I’m pretty sure Tiger King is the reference to covid because we were all watching it as we were locked in our houses and bonded over it."
On Twitter, more voiced criticism.
"Are you telling me Fall Out Boy made an updated We Didn't Start The Fire except they missed the point about the events needing to be chronological and instead they just plugged in whatever rhymed," @mcrmy119 wrote.
@TheHallWay1 added: "I'm sorry but that Fall Out Boy Billy Joel cover is an abomination."
Fall Out Boy, known for hits including "Thnks fr th Mmrs," is currently on its So Much For (Tour) Dust which follows its "So Much (For) Stardust" album, which was released in March.
I did not like this song.
It's not in chronological order so there's no hope of reestablishing nostalgia for anything in particular. After the first verse it becomes so haphazard that it actually kind of does the reverse. One example excerpt I picked at random:
Explosion Lebanon (2020) Unabomber (1996), Bobbitt, John (1993) (also is that really the only way you could find a rhyme?) Bombing Boston marathon (2013) Balloon Boy (2009), War on Terror (2001) QAnon (2017)
There's just no rhyme or reason to things being included. The original was good because it called back to things people cared about. He talked about JFK's assassination in a way that in like 3 seconds called back for an instant to the anger and helplessness everyone felt when it happened. This is just a bunch of shit thrown together. You can't put Balloon Boy between the Boston bombing and the war on terror.
What about the WTO protest movement? The growth of the internet? Napster? Fight Club and that whole era of movies that were born out of everyone realizing their weird bullshit office jobs were killing them? Everyone realizing the system was fucked? Everyone's friends going off to war for a whole generation? Guantanemo Bay and Abu Ghraib? The dot-com boom, tech jobs, the mortgage collapse and years and years of everyone struggling? Realizing the people at the top are mostly criminals? Student loans? Bernie Sanders?
Look, this is just my opinion, but these lyrics read like someone who doesn't know shit about shit, and who just spent an afternoon on Wikipedia without caring if any of it made sense or meant anything.
Worst of all, there's this:
NU-cle-ar ACC-i-dent 👍 Fu-KU shi-MA Ja-PAN 👍 CRI-me-an pen-IN-su-la 👍 CAM-bridge An-a-LYT-i-ca 👍 KIM! JONG! UN! 🤨 RobertDowneyjuniorIronMan 🤮
... and then the chorus just starts, as if they hadn't just committed a war crime.