Thursday, June 19, 2025
Time: 7:45 PM
Song: We Didn’t Start
the Fire
Artist: Fall Out Boy
Mode of Consumption:
Listening to the radio on the way home from work night at fairgrounds.
Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/60glT2wsoSHV3B8yCRSB8v?si=2a14c11013594680
When Billy Joel released the original version of this song in the late 1980s, I remember people talking about all the history in the lyrics. I was like six, so while some of the names I likely had heard, I certainly didn’t comprehend each reference. Heck, I might not yet if I were to comb through the lyrics.
I don’t know if I missed this Fallout Boy cover in 2023, or I simply didn’t pay any attention to it. I see on Spotify that it covers the news items between 1989 and 2023.
If I were to read the lyrics, my sense is that I have more connection with the things from the 1990s and maybe early 2000s than the last decade or so.
The news cycle is so rapid these days that I am not sure how much the average person will retain. I mean there are those keyboard warriors on social media that can recite every political transgression of the opposite party that they support and hit every talking point of their party.
Even those shift so quickly that I can’t keep up. Or even want to.
I’d like to wake up in the 1990s where avoiding news was pretty easy, and unless you sought out someone’s opinion on the politics of the country, you likely didn’t know them. Now it’s like team sport, people must wear their politics on their sleeves or caps.
I understand that active citizenship is important to democracy. I just wish more people took that energy to their local governmental units and found a way to contribute. Who knows, maybe even encounter the issues that are impacting the people next door and then work with the people around them to fix that problem.
It probably wouldn’t
stop the fire, but maybe it’d cool things down a bit.
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