Billy Joel penned the song We Didn't Start The Fire after a conversation he had with a teenage Sean Lennon - who expressed his anxiety over the events transpiring in the late 80's. Joel recalls Lennon saying "Nothing happened in the Fifties and early Sixties" Billy's retort - “Whoa, didn’t you ever hear of the Korean War, the Suez Canal, the Hungarian Freedom Fighters?”
Joel started jotting down events from the past 4 decades and produced the song which would appear on on his 1989 album Storm Front:
Fast forward to 2020 - with the COVID-19 virus impacting the entire globe,
Matt Warburton (TV writer for The Simpsons and The Mindy Project.) sent out a tweet evoking the 1989 classic:
The tweet prompted many tweeters to take the suggestion and pen their own updated verses to the song, including Brittany Barkholtz, a St. Paul MN therapist, piano teacher and Billy Joel fan :
Other clever lyrics -
