We Didn't Start the Billy Joel Parodies

Billy Joel wrote a song; history is going strong.
It was nineteen-eighty nine; and the song was doing fine.
Many copies of it sell; stuff about the past they tell:
Politics, and culture too; movies, war and what have you.

Other people came along; they all really like the song,
Realize that it was a hit; want to have a part in it.
History is first to go, from nineteen hundred to zero.
Other topics soon include everything from nice to lewd.

We didn't start the riffing
It was always with us
Since the song first hit us
We didn't start the riffing
No, we didn't coin it
But we want to join it

Every singer has a version; can you really blame the person?
The song's a really catchy tune; and you, too, will sing it soon.
Can't get it out of your head; you may wish that you were dead,
Sing it 'til you cough up phlegm; then go back and start again.

You can make new lyrics too, so long as they fit the tune.
Do a List Song if you like; name the pieces of your bike.
If story's your imperative, you could write a narrative.
Just be clever and enjoy; think of tropes you could employ.

We didn't start the riffing
It was always with us
Since the song first hit us
We didn't start the riffing
No, we didn't coin it
But we want to join it

Change the genre if you're clever; grunge or funk or lounge — whatever:
Country Music, Reggae-vibe, Heavy Metal, suicide,
New Wave, Hip-Hop, Electronic, Punk Rock,
Soul and Ska and Disco too, but Jimmy Hart will also do

Or just like a bunch of dopes, make a song that's listing tropes:
Filk Song, List Song, Stock Parodies come along.
Piano Key Wave, Piss-Take Rap, you can just list any crap;
God-Is-Love Songs, Ear Worm, Power Ballad, Seiza Squirm.

We didn't start the riffing
It was always with us
Since the song first hit us
We didn't start the riffing
No, we didn't coin it
But we want to join it

Trope Namer: Joel, Billy — but troper, don't be silly
he didn't invent the Long List, "done before" that is the gist
googling it in a hurry brings up a dude named Tim Curry.
That man sang "I Do The Rock" — obscure today, such bad luck

As we said, it's often done many times under the sun.
We will list examples here; austerity you need not fear.
The list is not complete of course, and this is our driving force,
So go add more, lickety-split, or you will soon be deep in shame.

---

Examples:

Advertising

• This mid-1990s ad for Star Trek: The Next Generation ("We Didn't Start the Series")
• The Coca-Cola FIFA World Cup Special ad "Los Cocacoleros".
• "See Those Bids Go Higher", an ad for auction website Golden Palace.

Fan Works

• Every edition of Halloween Unspectacular minus the last two ends with a parody of the song. The first three had full versions with lyrics based around whatever happened in that edition, while the others only use the parody's chorus.
• In the Kedabory's Muppet Mania episode "Welcome Back", the opening number is "We Didn't Start the Muppets", a List Song of the Muppets' accomplishments over the years, as well as the names of characters and their performers.

Films — Live-Action

• The Avengers: Endgame cast does a version, covering Marvel Cinematic Universe history up to Infinity War.
• In The Five-Year Engagement, while celebrating his engagement to Violet, Tom's friend, Alex proceeds to sing a "We Didn't Start the Fire" parody listing all of Tom's ex-girlfriends.

Live-Action TV

• In one episode of Russell Howard's Good News, Russell Howard sang a version listing all the nonsensical (and occasionally contradictory) things that the Daily Mail have claimed can cause cancer.

Music Videos

• "We Didn't Start The Fighting", a.k.a "A MUSICAL summation of Metal Gear games!", summing up the series chronologically from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater to the then-recent Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
• One based on the Internet, "We Didn't Start the Flame War". Different than most in that instead of a list of people or events, it's a list of internet comments (aside from the inevitable Rickroll.)
• The Simpsons did a Suspiciously Similar Song Version, "They'll Never Stop the Simpsons", at the end of the 2002 episode "Gump Roast". So far, they seem to be right.
• San Francisco a cappella group The Richter Scales did "Here Comes Another Bubble", winning the 2007 Webby Award and infamously getting its video taken down for briefly using a single copyrighted image. It was later rereleased as "version 1.1".
• "We Love Barney Fife," Guns 'n' Moses (a side project of Richard Cheese)
• JibJab did one of these for their 2007 year in review.
• "Ryan Started the Fire" of The Office. Which is literally just the original with that one line changed.
• Rich Alvarez has "Games Are Our One Desire".
• Comedian Bruce Fine did a parody summarizing events from 2009-2010.
• Amateur Transplants' "Finals Countdown", listing a bunch of medical conditions that medical students need to know for their final exam.
• "We Didn't Find Osama", criticizing the Bush administration.
• YTMND has "We Didn't Start This Website!"
• cakke.com's "The Internet Stars Are Viral", a compilation of viral video stars.
• "Facebook Anthem" aka "I'm Getting Bored of Facebook" about stupid Facebook games.
• Gorden & Phirm - "We Didn't Start the '80s"
• Putnam Pig did the "Swine Flu Song" (aka "Pigs Didn't Start the Swine Flu"), defending pigs against accusations of spreading the H1-N1 virus.
• "Tom's Bushes are on Fire", recounting the true story of a guy who got his bushes burnt down by a stray firework.
• LMcDuff08 did "Wall Street Meltdown" based on various Wall Street disasters in 2007.
• "We Didn't Start the Crisis", about the subprime mortgage crisis.
• "We Didn't Start the Star Wars".
• An updated version of the song recounting events from 1990 to 2008.
• "We Didn't Start the Fire 2", another updated version recounting events from roughly 2000 to 2010.
• Another updated version.
• The best of the updates (For one thing, this guy can actually sing and doesn't just cover memes).
• "The Obama Song" criticizing the first two months of Barack Obama's presidency.
• I Live in Singapura is kinda funny, even if you don't know much about Singapore's history.
• Another Suspiciously Similar Song version: "We Didn't Start the Landfills", a (cheesy and Anvilicious) performance at Reseda High School intended to encourage recycling.
• "We Didn't Start the Let's Play", from SlimKirby's Let's Play of "Yoshi's Island".
• "We Didn't Start the Abridged", based on Naruto: The Abridged Series.
  • There's also the "You'll Never Stop the Abridged" Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series fan video.
• "We Didn't Start the Weekend", one bored college student's summary of his weekend activities.
• "I Love New York", a short one about stuff in New York State.
• "Who's Gonna Watch the Watchmen?", about Watchmen.
• A Harry Potter version, "We Didn't Start the Fandom". Another one is "We Didn't Start the Fire - HARRY POTTER EDITION".
• "The Wii Didn't Start the Fire". Holding true to the history motif, it covers the history of video games, from the 1950s to the present.
• "We Didn't Start The Fire", The Literal Version.
• A unique one would be "We Didn't Start the Fire - Dangerous Women", because it lists the most influential women in history.
• Everything Gives You Cancer from Russell Howard's Good News, essentially a Take That! against the Daily Mail. The greatest similarity is in the chorus, however.
• "We Play World of Warcraft".
• "You Can't Fight the Homestuck" is sometimes used to introduce people to the series.
• "Stuck In The World of Warcraft."
• "We Didn't Start the Turtle", a Discworld version that covered every story at the time of writing, but was sadly out of date almost immediately afterwards.
• The YouTube comedy group Galo Frito made "RETROSPECTIVA 2013" which goes through some of the events, fads, and stories of 2013 in Brazil (Surprisingly, it sounds similar to the JibJab example above).
• Impressionist John Culshaw does Simon Cowell singing "I DID Start The Fire" (also performed on The Now Show).
  I did start the fire,
  And it's nicely burning,
  With the crap we're churning.
• Not even My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is immune to this. Behold, "We Didn't Watch The Seasons", a recap of seasons 1-4. There is also one that lists the show's writers, "My Little Pony Writers", and another one about the fandom itself, "Nobody Saw This Coming"
• "We Didn't Start the Viral", a recap of YouTube's most viral videos by Dane Boedigheimer (the creator of The Annoying Orange).
• "We Didn't Own an iPad", a list of stuff popular with those who were kids in the 70s and 80s.
• In an October 2005 episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, correspondent Rob Corddry did his own version to discuss the Valerie Plame scandal.
• "We Didn't Start The SocJus" - Social Justice: The Musical, a video about Social Justice, Media Watchdogs, Moral Guardians and a bunch more crazies.
• From the German satire magazine extra 3, there is one version ridiculing the soccer club FC Bayern Munich.
• "The Browns Are A Dumpster Fire", listing all the Cleveland Browns' many starting quarterbacks from 1999 to 2016.
  "Prob'ly as I sing this song, they're gonna find another one..."
• "Warriors for Hire" by the Library Bards is about Mighty Magiswords.
• YouTube cover and parody artist Riverdude Covers created "We Didn't Start the Bizarre", a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure inspired parody that recaps the events of the series from Phantom Blood to Golden Wind.
• "We Didn't Stop The Virus", a recap of events in 2020.
• The 2020 Song. Same concept as the above, different take. Performer by the Harry Potter-focused YouTuber Tessa Netting.
• For fans of The Silmarillion, this version based on events of the First Age.
• For The Lord of the Rings, there is "It All Started in the Shire".
• There are two for A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones, one listing all the memorable deaths, "A Song of Ice and Fire", and the other about the series, "We Didn't Start the Fire (and Ice)"
• For fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, there is "Avatar Song".
• For Star Trek, there is "We Didn't Start the Canon", which covers the shows from Star Trek: The Original Series to Star Trek: Picard and the movies.
• For Star Wars, there is ""We Didn't Start the Fire (Star Wars parody)" by Royish Good Looks which covers different characters and events, not in chronological order. There is also "We Didn't Start the Fire: A Star Wars parody" by Angels in Overcoats, which is chronological order

Songs

• German comedian Otto Waalkes did "Wir haben Grund zum Feiern" ("We have a reason to celebrate"), which lists off a bunch of alcoholic beverages.
• The Tom Green song "Pet Names for Genitalia" (see I Call Him "Mister Happy").
• "We Didn't Start the Blitzball", about the Fictional Sport Blitzball from Final Fantasy X.
• The Fringemunks released "Susan Pratt Started the Fire" (lyrics), which recapped episode "The Road Not Taken" of Fringe.
• The Star Wars podcast ForceCast featured "We Didn't Start the ForceCast" on their October 29, 2010 cast at 1:51:40 (lyrics).
• "We Have a Strong Desire", by Shlock Rock. It covers the history of the Jews from the Bible until present day.
• Following the rescue of Todd Russell and Brant Webb from a collapsed mine in Beaconsfield, Tasmania, the radio team Hamish and Andy recorded a song to help them catch up: "We're filling in the miners. / They've been down there weeks, so they have missed heaps. / We're filling in the miners / So they're right across all essential goss." They concluded it by declaring that one thing hadn't changed: "Our songs are still half-assed."
• Hamish and Andy made a song about a Bacon Number of 100 to this tune, going from Salma Hayek to Bacon.
• Courtesy of WTAM 1100 (specifically The Mike Trivisonno Show), there's "We Live in Ohio", a good-natured tribute to all things Cleveland, as well as a gentle criticism of local politicians' tendency to focus on small or non-existent problems and ignore looming disaster:
  We live in Ohio,/And we goin' broke but we can't have smokin' here;
  We live in Ohio,/And our mayor's ramblin'; we can't get gamblin' here.
• "We Set the Dog on Fire" by the guys at Spaff.com, enumerating dishes made from dog meat.
• "We Didn't Start Satire", by the Capitol Steps, recaps political and media scandals since 1981.
• Local Seattle show Almost Live! did a version in January 1990 based on then-recent history in Seattle.
• "We Love You, Dr. Freeman", based on Half-Life.
• "I Live Life On Tumblr."
• Christian parody group ApologetiX has a parody called "We Didn't Start Messiah."
• /v/ presents "We Didn't Make the Roster".
• J.B.O., naturally. Their rendition may or may not owe a debt of gratitude to Otto as well, though the fire (English) "Feier" (German for party) pun both employ is kind of obvious.
• Guns N' Moses has "We Love Barney Fife", a song listing and declaring its love to the characters from The Andy Griffith Show, but especially Barney himself.
• Kylee Henke's "You Can't Fight The Homestuck" is an ode to Homestuck, of course.
• "We Want Rey" by the PDX Broadsides has a section using this tune that lists several female characters from various works.
• "Listing All the List Songs" by Robbie Ellis is a List Song of list songs.
• Fall Out Boy caused a stir when they released a version covering the 30+ years between the original song's release and mid-2023.
• "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Goodbye Nova is an updated version of the original. Unfortunately, it is not in chronological order.
• "We Didn't Start The Fire Indian Version" highlights the history and culture of India
• "South of India", by the Rascalas, highlights culture in the 5 states in the south of India (Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu)

Lyrics only

• The Discworld version, "We Didn't Buy The Hardback".
• In Reddit, after the question "What's the TL;DR for 2016?", a redditor wrote this.
• An early Baby Blues Sunday Strip had "We Didn't Start Out Tired".
• Gary Geniesse - "We Didn't Start the VAXing" (scroll down on this page for lyrics), dedicated to a VAX server that was the center of much social interaction at the University of Florida in the 1980s.
• Editor James Broomhead at InternationalEd.org wrote "Motorsport In 2010 Review (Or We Didn't Start the Car)" (lyrics).
• Keydeck of Toytown Germany did one for the site's forums, "We Didn't Start the Forum" (lyrics).
• Orderly Oasis LLC on Facebook did "We Didn't Start the Pile" about disorderly piles of papers.
• There's even a We Didn't Start TV Tropes written by alone-in-the-rain on deviantART. The text of they lyrics is available here.
• You read this page, right?
• "We Didn't Want the Retcon", chronicling the events of X-Men from The Dark Phoenix Saga to Age of Apocalypse. The site it was archived on is now defunct, but thankfully the song can be viewed via archive sites.
• Originally from 4chan, somebody on /m/ posted a version chronicling the entire history of Gundam's original Universal Century timeline, which can be seen on the series' quotes page.
• To "celebrate" 52 cancelled DC Comics New 52 titles, The Outhouse gave us this.
• The Parks and Recreation episode "Leslie and Ron" has Leslie intentionally butchering the lyrics of the song in order to annoy Ron so he can finally talk to her and reveal why he let their friendship go sour during the Time Skip between Seasons 6 and 7.
• The Alt Text to the xkcd strip "Desert Island" fits the rhythm of the song.
• A Jeopardy! fan on Reddit wrote "We Didn't Start the All-Stars", a tribute to a tournament held in 2019.
• The Goldbergs' Season 5 Hanukkah Episode's B-plot involves Barry and Adam fighting over who gets to sing the song at their school's winter talent show. Barry wins, but his inability to learn the lyrics properly leads him to rewrite the song with lyrics about the school.
• "We Didn't Start the Babylonian Fire" takes the Babylonian King List and sings it to the tune, with the chorus in Akkadian.

Podcasts

• 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back ends its review of Ready Player One (episodes 1-8) with a song by Taylor Conner called "1980s Reference!"
• My Brother, My Brother and Me has one about various jokes from their show, written and performed by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
• The entire premise of We Didn't Start the Fire is to devote an episode to studying each and every one of the people, events and other things mentioned in the original song. The theme tune is a kazoo version of it.

Puppet Shows

• The Funday Pawpet Show: Poink and KP do a version for the show's past events.
• Hammer Films End With a Fire, according to The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre.

Radio

• Christian comedy show Sunday Nite once did "We don't like the choir/The way they sing on Sunday/They should hide on Monday..."

Web Original

• TV Tropes:
  • We Didn't Start the Führer
  • We Didn't start the Billy Joel parodies (you are here)
• SCP Foundation: SCP-6135 is a humorous SCP that contains an "extended" version of the original song where Billy Joel references things that, at the time, hadn't happened yet (Desert Storm, the Columbine shooting, the creation of the Pokemon and Harry Potter franchises, etc.). The twist is, the Foundation found out about it in 1990, so their reaction is extra hilarious.
  Addendum: As of March 12, 1991, Item #6135 is pending SCP reclassification at the request of Site Director Elliott Hawthorne. Arkansas Governor William Clinton and Soviet statesman Boris Yeltsin are currently being monitored in order to determine the extent and accuracy of #6135's apparent predictive properties. Investigation into the identities of Tim McVay and Harry Potter is ongoing.
• For All Time: The spiritual sequel Well Enough Alone ends with Joe Springsteen singing this world's version of the song,

Web Videos

• JibJab's 2007 Year In Review used the song's melody.
• Adam Pacitti of Cultaholic wrote and performed "What Happened to That Wrestler?" as the opening theme for their series of videos of the same name about the fate of old wrestlers.
• Joueur du Grenier ends his Valentine special episode (about love-themed and porn games) with a list of old pornographic games that are too gross to be reviewed.
• Diamond Axe Studios Music starts the Worst Hit Songs of 2020 video by setting fire to a wooden sign reading "2020" and singing a version of Billy Joel's song recapping the year.
• CollegeHumor did We Didn't Start The Flame War, a parody of internet discourse.
• CD PROJEKT are all Liars, a song ridiculing the buggyness of Cyberpunk 2077.
• We Didn't Start the Virus, a made-at-home music video during the 2020 lockdown, featuring way too many Star Wars figurines.
• Josh Scorcher has one in his Top Ten 2020 Fails (of the Video Game industry) called Fails Fill Us All With Ire. And for each yearly videos like this, he'll do parodies of other songs in spirit of this trope.
• LinksTheSun ends his Parenthèse about the best movie characters (each Parenthèse is a Top 20 about a given subject) by a Long List of other great characters who weren't described in the actual top 20.^note The Parenthèse formula always has a "honorable mentions" which serves to refer items which could have been in the top, but the honorable mentions section usually isn't musical
• Tony Schiavone uses one as the opening theme for his "What Happened When" show on Mondays when he discusses classic wrestling promotions with Conrad Thompson.
• jan Misali created "how do we know what's mainline" which questions what is considered a mainline Super Mario Bros. game.
• "We Didn't Rig The Mob Vote" by longestsoloever riffs on the Video Game/Minecraft mob votes and the online discourse surrounding it.
• Memes Didn't Start the Fire by Reasonable Pandemonium homages a variety of memes from the Turn Of The Millenium to the present day.
• WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE That Was Henry A FNAF Parody: As the title implies, this is a homage to Five Nights at Freddy's
• Fallout Boy We Didn't Start the Fire - 2023 edition (Song Parody): Not by Fall Out Boy, but it does list a variety of works and cultural phenomena that came out in 2023

Webcomics

• Square Root of Minus Garfield: The Milestone Celebration for the 5000th comic was a recap of a lot of memorable previous comics, set to the tune of "We Didn't Start the Fire."

Western Animation

• In the Family Guy episode "Boy (Dog) Meets Girl (Dog)", Billy Joel appears listing all of the things Peter Griffin has eaten to the tune of the song and later lists minor characters in the episode to wrap it up.
  We didn't write an ending, so we're all together trying to make it better!
  • In the episode "Bigfat", Peter tries to sing it to see if it contains instructions on starting a fire, but doesn't remember the actual lyrics.
    Stuff, stuff, stuff, and stuff, history and stuff and stuff,
    People, people, someone's name,
    History and sports.
    Big disaster, someone's name, stuff and stuff and stuff, and stuff,
    History, someone's name,
    Something I don't know.
    Famous guy, movie star,
    Don't know who these people are,
    Stuff and stuff and history
    Yelling really loud at me!
• In The Simpsons episode, "Gump Roast", the episode closes out with Dan Castellaneta singing about all many of the memorable Simpsons moments in the series (up to that point anyway).
  They'll never stop The Simpsons! Have no fears, we've got stories for years!
• Tooning Out the News featured a song to this tune mentioning several events from 2020.

---

Billy Joel, please don't sue us
It's a catchy song, that's why this list is long
Billy Joel, please don't sue us
Cause I'm not a singer, this is just The Stinger

---