Pete Wentz Explains Thought Process Behind Fall Out Boy’s Modern Twist on Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’

usmagazine.com:

Fall Out Boy put a modern twist on a classic rock hit by updating the lyrics to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” more than 30 years after its 1989 release.The new version, which the Grammy-nominated group released on Thursday, June 28, swaps out the original’s pop culture and political references for some of the most notable events of the past three decades — including the death of Michael Jackson, former President Donald Trump’s impeachments, climate change, the Black Lives Matter movement, Taylor Swift and Kanye West’s feud and more.Bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz gave Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe insight into the song choice, revealing in a new interview that he had been trying to the band to do a new version of the tune “for so long.” It finally came into fruition after bandmate Patrick Stump gave the OK.“I remember listening to the original when I was little and I was like, ‘I don’t know what half this stuff is,’” Wentz, 44, explained. “And it made me look up a bunch of this stuff.

So, it was just interesting thinking about the stuff we would include versus you wouldn’t. Because there’s some stuff that was in the original that kind of is lost to the sands of time.

You know what I mean? So yeah, we just did it. We put it together. It’s just a fun, goofy thing.”Fall Out Boy’s reimagined version mentions everything from Queen Elizabeth II’s death to the September 11 terrorist attacks, but Wentz noted that they weren’t worried about following a timeline. “It’s just a little bit out of order, but it is what it is,” he told Apple Music. “Listen, we wanted the Internet to still have something to complain about.”One event the group chose to leave out of the new lyrics was the COVID-19 pandemic. “That’s all anybody