- Fall Out Boy's new cover of the 1989 Billy Joel classic covers a lot of the bases the original touch.
- In trying to squeeze in 34 years of world events, the band touches on Obama, Trump, QAnon and more.
Thanks for the memories, Fall Out Boy. Even if it turns out, some were far from great.
On Wednesday, the rock band released this Century's version of "We Didn't Start the Fire" seeking to summarize all the news, pop culture, and world events that have taken place from 1989 through 2023. Like Billy Joel's classic, the band weaved in a mix of sports, "The Cubs go all the way again"; Pop culture, "Pokemon" "MySpace"; and world events like "Y2K."
Unlike Billy Joel, the band said these things in absolutely no discernible order whatsoever.
They even threw in a direct nod to the original by referencing when in March 2021 the Ever Given, one of the world's largest container ships, blocked the Suez Canal. In Joel's original, he sings about "Trouble in the Suez" a nod to the 1956 Suez crisis when Israel invaded Egypt after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser took control of the canal. The United Kingdom and France later joined with Israel. President Dwight D. Eisenhower pressured the US allies to withdraw. The affair is a key moment in the decline of the British Empire.
It's definitely more than you bargained for, yet here are the other major political references Fall Out Boy made in the new cover.
"Arab Spring" (2010): Starting out in Tunisia, a wave of pro-democracy protests swept across North Africa and the Middle East. In the wake of the uproar, Egypitan Hosni Mubarak was out and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi fled and was captured. But for all the democratic fervor, progress has been slow.
"LA Riots" "Rodney King" (1992): California's largest city erupted after four Los Angeles Policemen were acquitted for beating Rodney King, who suffered permanent brain damage as a result. King was black and three of the officers were white, setting off a response that as NPR later recalled was fueled by years of inequality and complaints about policing. The mayor declared a state of emergency and the governor ordered 2,000 National Guard troops into the city.
"Crimea Peninsula" (2014): Armed men, later confirmed to be ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, took buildings on the Crimean peninsula, a part of Ukraine between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov that is separated by the Kerch Strait. Putin was responding to a wave of protests that led to the ouster of pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych. The area, which, as the BBC points out, has a Russian-speaking majority, later voted to join Russia in a referendum that US and Ukraine called into question. Putin's seizure of the land would later be overshadowed by Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
"Cambridge Analytica" (2018): The British consulting firm had been around for years, but bombshell reporting by The New York Times and The Guardian in 2018 sparked a scandal. A whistleblower came forward to claim that the firm, which had worked with Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and the pro-Brexit movement, harvested millions of Americans' Facebook profiles in a massive data breach.
"More war in Afghanistan": (2001) Less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, the US began a bombing campaign of Afghanistan to root out the Taliban fighters that had provided safe haven to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda. The US did not completely leave until a chaotic withdrawal in August 2021, ending the longest war in the nation's history.
"Obama" (2008): Illinois Sen. Barack Obama shocked the political world by winning the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008, eventually prevailing in a protracted clash with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Obama went on to defeat Republican presidential nominee John McCain en route to becoming the nation's first Black president. He led the US out of the Great Recession. His signature domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act, expanded healthcare coverage to millions. He later won reelection in 2012, though his accomplishments were endangered by Donald Trump's election in 2016.
"Trump gets impeached twice" (2021): President Donald Trump became the first president to be impeached twice in the wake of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. He had previously been impeached for withholding funds to Ukraine in an alleged scheme to get dirt on the Bidens. The House vote to impeach him for inciting the riot was the most bipartisan in history. Both times, the Republican-led Senate voted to acquit Trump who claimed he had done nothing wrong.
"Oklahoma City bomb" (1995): One hundred sixty-eight people, including 13 children, were killed on April 19, 1995 when Timothy McVeigh planted a bomb outside of Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The attack was considered the worst act of domestic terrorism in the nation's history and it set off a renewed focus on homegrown extremism.
"QAnon" (2017): The far-right conspiracy theory was based on the belief that President Donald Trump would lead to the end of a cabal sex ring that included prominent Democratic politicians and celebrities. The theory took over social media in 2020, helped fuel the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, and brought early fame to future politicians such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican.
"Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice" (2015, 2014): Bland, who is Black, confronted a white officer during a 2015 traffic stop. She later died in police custody, though her family has long questioned the conclusion that she died by suicide. Footage of the stop unearthed in 2019 further additional questions about the officer's conduct. Rice, who was also Black, was shot and killed in 2014 while playing with a pellet gun. Video later showed that Rice, who was 12 years old, was killed within two seconds of officers arriving, The New York Times reported. Their deaths added to the national outrage over law enforcement's treatment of Black people.
"George Floyd" (2020): George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed on May 25, 2020 as he told Minneapolis Police officers he was struggling to breathe while one of them, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee into his neck. Video of Floyd's death sparked the largest mass protests since the 1960s Civil Rights Movement with demonstrations all over the world. Chauvin was later convicted of second-degree murder.
"Bush v. Gore" (2000): In a landmark 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that there was not enough time to come out with a proper way to recount disputed votes in the presidential race in Florida between Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore. The decision ended the recount, handing Bush, the Republican presidential nominee, the state and the necessary margin to win the Electoral College and thus the presidency as well. The decision remains controversial. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who voted with the majority, later expressed regret over the nation's highest court taking the case.
Bonus: "Tom Delonge and aliens" (2017): The Blink 182 guitarist has played a major role in re-elevating questions about extraterrestrial life back into the public conscience. As The Washington Post recounted, "DeLonge's associates have appeared on CNN and Fox News, written for The Washington Post and been cited in the New York Times" all by publishing a series of videos of unexplained aerial events.