Mr. Allsop's terrific video tribute!
Updated
June 16, 2009
Originally released on the STORM FRONT album, "We Didn't Start the Fire" is an excellent education tool for teachers and students! Below are the song's lyrics. Click on the links within the lyrics for info on the major events of the 20th century!
"We Didn't Start The Fire" by Billy Joel
Harry
Truman, Doris Day, Red
China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter
Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard
Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn
Monroe
Rosenbergs,
H-Bomb, Sugar
Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The
King and I", and "The
Catcher in the Rye"
Eisenhower, vaccine,
England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace,
Santayana goodbye
CHORUS
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it
Josef
Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser
and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella,
Communist
Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan
Peron, Toscanini, dacron
Dien Bien Phu and "Rock
Around the Clock"
Einstein,
James Dean, Brooklyn's
got a winning team
Davy Crockett, "Peter
Pan", Elvis Presley, Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest,
Alabama,
Khrushchev
Princess Grace, "Peyton
Place", trouble in the Suez
CHORUS
Little
Rock, Pasternak,
Mickey Mantle,
Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou
En-Lai, "Bridge
on the River Kwai"
Lebanon, Charles
de Gaulle, California
baseball
Starkweather,
homicide, children of thalidomide
Buddy
Holly, "Ben-Hur",
space monkey, Mafia
hula
hoops, Castro,
Edsel is a no go
U2, Syngman
Rhee, payola
and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, "Psycho",
Belgians
in the Congo
CHORUS
Hemingway, Eichmann,
"Stranger in a
Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin,
Bay of Pigs Invasion
"Lawrence of
Arabia", British
Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John
Glenn, Liston beats
Patterson
Pope Paul, Malcolm
X, British
politician sex
JFK, blown away, what
else do I have to say
CHORUS
Birth control, Ho
Chi Minh, Richard Nixon,
back again
Moonshot,
Woodstock, Watergate,
punk rock
Begin,
Reagan, Palestine,
terror on the
airline
Ayatollolah's
in Iran, Russians
in Afghanistan
"Wheel of
Fortune" , Sally
Ride, heavy metal,
suicide
Foreign debts, homeless
vets, AIDS, Crack,
Bernie
Goetz
Hypodermics on
the shore, China's
under martial law
Rock and
Roller Cola Wars, I can't take it anymore
CHORUS
We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on...
A super
video of the song: Billy Joel -
"We Didn't Start the Fire"
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