Fall Out Boy debuts modern update of 'We Didn't Start the Fire,' complete with new lyrics

WASHINGTON (TND) — Emo pop-punk band Fall Out Boy released a re-worked cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" Wednesday, with lyrics covering major events of the last three decades.

Billy Joel's No. 1 hit song "We Didn't Start the Fire" may be the most famous – and condensed – cliffs notes history of the Cold War era.

The nearly-five minute tune chronicles, in near-chronological order, 118 major events in global politics, history and culture from 1949, the year Joel was born, to 1989, the year the song was released.

However, with 34 years of events just as momentous as those the rock and roll piano man covered now in the history books and headlines, the pop-punks felt a new chapter for the song was needed.

The new old song – or old song made new, if you like – clocks in at just over three and a half minutes and features highlights of history and culture from 1989 to now, ranging from "Captain Planet. Arab Spring. LA Riots. Rodney King" to "SSRIs. Prince and the Queen die. World Trade. Second Plane."

Fall Out Boy's version does not tackle events chronologically in the same method Joel's did nor does it mention the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a conscious omission by the band, as bassist and songwriter Pete Wentz explained on Apple Music 1.

"It’s like, that’s all anybody talked You know what I mean? I don’t know. It felt like there was a couple of things that felt like a little on the nose," he explained.

Wentz went on to say he thought the band "did our best" to tackle the last 34 years of global events.

He also explained how the song came about, citing the deluge-like nature of the information Joel presented in the original.

"Listen, this song was just a I remember listening to the original when I was little and I was like, 'I don’t know what half this stuff is.' And it made me look up a bunch of this stuff," he said. "So, it was just interesting thinking about the stuff we would include versus you wouldn’t. Because there’s some stuff that was in the original that kind of is lost to the sands of time. You know what I mean? So yeah, we just did it. We put it together. It’s just a fun, goofy thing, you know what I mean?"