The anthem Billy Joel calls “the worst musical thing I’ve ever written”
Through every fault of his own, Billy Joel proves to be one of the most divisive figures in music. You either love him but can easily see why others loathe him, or loathe him but can kind of see why others might love him. Sat in the middle is Joel himself–a man who has derided many of his classics, heaped praise on cult obscurities and questions his own enterprise more than a few times. The case of one classic exemplifies that…
Let’s start with the prosecution’s case for the Jury: I’ve gotten in trouble before for my opinion on Billy Joel, namely, the fact that I think he’s not very good. Some things I would like to clarify off the bat: William Joel is a fantastic piano player. He also has a couple of good songs. I’m not a monster: I like ‘Movin’ Out’. ‘Scenes From an Italian Restaurant’ is a stone-cold classic. Even ‘It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me’ is so uncool that it’s cool.
But Billy also has some stinkers. Case in point: ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’. If you want a fast-paced stream-of-conscious recitation of quasi-political history, might I suggest R.E.M.’s ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’ instead? ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ is all one-note nonsense wrapped up in a grating hook that you can’t get out of your head for days at a time. It’s a terrible, awful, no-good, very bad song.
But don’t take my word for it: just ask Joel himself. While appearing on The Howard Stern Show back in 2010, Stern attempted to get Joel to admit that he hated the song. Joel wouldn’t go that far, but he still wasn’t very kind to what might still be his biggest commercial hit.
“I think it’s probably the worst musical thing I’ve ever written,” Joel claimed. “I don’t think it’s much of a melody.” To prove his point, Joel hammered out the song’s vocal melody on the piano, showing its simplicity and underscoring it with the sound of snoring.
Joel’s distaste for the melody of ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ can be traced back almost as far as the song’s original recording. ”Take a song like ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire.’ It’s really not much of a song,” Joel claimed all the way back in 1993. “If you take the melody by itself, terrible. Like a dentist drill.”
Now, for the defense: I’ve also landed in trouble before for my opinion on Billy Joel, namely the fact that I think he is very good. And I think ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ typifies why. Somehow, it is both a smash hit and a modern history lesson all contained within less than five minutes and even fewer notes.
While Joel, a maestro of sorts, might’ve been displeased with the simplicity of the melody that the public lapped up, he was unwilling to criticise the concept. And for good reason. The innovation of reciting cultural history in an unfurling flow of song is exactly what Bob Dylan received hordes of praise for when it came to his – admittedly prettier and perhaps more considered – ‘Murder Most Foul’. It’s also worth noting that maybe Gil Scott-Heron beat them both to the punch with ‘The Revolution Will Not be Televised’. However, neither achieved the same impact as Joel’s catchy incarnation.
‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ was undoutbedly a very clever conceit for a commercial pop song. It is also one that proves all the more prescient today. We are currently bombarded with a constant stream of how bad things are in the world, but Joel’s cheesy track proves that things have always been rotten, including pop production values.
He might have hoped for a stronger melody, but that’s just a sign of his perfectionism, and he always maintained that the idea behind the track was solid. It was merely upended by the fact that he broke from tradition and wrote the words first this time. Ultimately, can a huge hit that traverses 118 historical events in a matter of minutes with a core message that’ll never get old really be that bad?
Watch Billy Joel explain the shortcomings of ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ down below.
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