Pete Wentz on why Fall Out Boy’s updated ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ doesn’t mention COVID
nme.comFall Out Boy‘s Pete Wentz has discussed the band’s updated version of Billy Joel‘s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ and why it doesn’t reference COVID.This week, the band shared a new and updated version of the iconic hit, featuring lyrics from between its original release in 1989 and the present day.In the original track, the lyrics included: “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.”These have been swapped out in the Fall Out Boy version for: “Captain Planet, Arab Spring, LA riots, Rodney King, deep fakes, earthquakes, Iceland volcano, Oklahoma City bomb, Kurt Cobain, Pokémon, Tiger Woods, MySpace, Monsanto GMOs.”Now, Wentz has shared his explanations on the lyrics, and reasoning behind one big omission. “Dude, honestly, this idea has been brewing for so long,” Wentz told Zane Lowe on Apple Music. “I’ve been trying to get somebody to do this for so long because it just seems so perfect.
30 years later … I’ve been trying to do it.”He added: “So we’re 34 years later, I think. And so I’ve been trying to get somebody to do it for … four years.
And finally Patrick [Stump] was like, ‘We should just do it.’ And listen, this song was just a … I remember listening to the original when I was little and I was like, ‘I don’t know what half this stuff is.’ 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.
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