We Didn't Start the Fire is a song by Billy Joel that lists major events in his lifetime, from 1949 to 1989, when the song was released on his album Storm Front. The song was written in response to a comment from Joel's son that the older generation saw no history in the making during its lifetime.
(1949)
(1950)
(1951)
(1952)
(1953)
(1954)
(1955)
(1956)
(1957)
(1958)
(1959)
(1960)
(1961)
(1962)
(1963)
(1964-1989)
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicideSummarised Lyrics
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
Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Perón, Toscanini, dacron
Dien Bien Phu falls, "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
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 hoop, Castro, Edsel is a no go
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo
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
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollahs in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shore, China's under martial law
Rock and Roller, Cola Wars