Billy Joel: We Didn't Start the Fire

Music Video
1989
G
4m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Billy Joel in Billy Joel: We Didn't Start the Fire (1989)

The music video for "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel, starring Marlee Matlin.The music video for "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel, starring Marlee Matlin.The music video for "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel, starring Marlee Matlin.

Director
- Chris Blum
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.7/10

663

YOUR RATING

Director
- Chris Blum
Stars

3User reviews

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 4 nominations total

Photos

Storyline

Edit

Did you know

Edit

Trivia
As of 2023, Brigitte Bardot, Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker and Bernhard Goetz are the only real-life people mentioned by name in the song, still living. Harry S. Truman, Walter Winchell, Joseph McCarthy, Marilyn Monroe, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Sugar Ray Robinson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Rocky Marciano, Liberace, Santayana, Joseph Stalin, Georgi Malenkov, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sergei Prokofiev, Winthrop Rockefeller, Roy M. Cohn, Juan Domingo Perón, Arturo Toscanini, Albert Einstein, James Dean, Elvis Presley, Nikita Khrushchev, Grace Kelly, Boris Pasternak, Jack Kerouac, Enlai Zhou, Charles de Gaulle, Buddy Holly, Syngman Rhee, John F. Kennedy, Ernest Hemingway, Adolf Eichmann, Sonny Liston, Pope Paul VI, Malcolm X, Ho Chí Minh and Ayatollah Khomeini were all already deceased at the time the song was released in 1989. Doris Day, Johnnie Ray, Joe DiMaggio, Richard Nixon, Marlon Brando, Queen Elizabeth II, Roy Campanella, Mickey Mantle, Fidel Castro, John Glenn, Floyd Patterson, Menachem Begin, Ronald Reagan and Sally Ride have all passed away since it was released.

Quotes
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 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

Connections
Edited into Billy Joel: Greatest Hits Volume III (1997)

User reviews3

Review

Featured review

10/10

Of remarkable excellence

A fantastic combination between art, history and pop culture all in one video clip. Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire" represents the period between 1949 (when he was born) to 1989 (the music release) and accounts to events of which the writer describes as things his generation wasn't responsible, mentioning famous personalities in politics, arts and others to particular events such as epic films releases, presidents assassinations to the moon race and others. The clip echoes sentiments and cultural aspects but doesn't necessarily follow all that.

The music video presents the physical and cultural evolution of an American family through the course of four decades, starting as a typical "I Love Lucy" kind of family, very sitcom like, through the rebellion of the counter-culture of the 1960's and Woodstock flower children - and by this time we have the parents aging each frame goes by - to the 1980's rock/pop explosion during the Reagan era.

Joel's song was so influential and interesting that in the following years, thanks to Youtubbers, many fans had made their compilations and versions to the song (even including updates with facts from 1990 and onwards) which includes pictures from the personalities and events mentioned in the lyrics. But this clip approach was to give a more cinematic setting and concept which revolves the transformation that happens to an American family and how things swing in several ways: the parents are running towards old age and can't keep up to new values while the youngsters grow up to rebel them and live their lives. It doesn't stick to the song entirely but maintains its concept. The execution was brilliant, and Billy appears as a background character who appears through the years in the exact same fashion: wearing black clothes and shades, using objects as musical instruments and during the song chorus appears in front of a real background image (e.g. Lee Harvey Oswald's killing or the Vietnamese captain's execution in the Pulitzer Prize winning image).

A spectacular song and an even more satisfying clip. One of the greatest of all time. 10/10.