Thanks to Jim Adams, for hosting Song Lyric Sunday. What kind of random stuff should I write about? Ben running into the backyard completely naked after his bath cuz he wanted to look at the Full Moon? Zeus barking at thunder? Me spending most of one morning with a smudge of chocolate on my face and Daughter not telling me? Or should I just direct you to Jim’s site for future prompts? There’s one I suggested coming up soon.

The prompt words this week are – Other, That, This – Fandango Sunday

It took me a while to decide how I wanted to use this week’s prompt. Did I want to just use one or more of the words and choose a song, like Bohemian Rhapsody? Or did I want to take the idea of “This, That, and the Other” and find a song to fit the idea?

I went with the idea… a bunch of random things. There were a few songs that came to mind, but I chose We Didn’t Start The Fire, written and performed by Billy Joel.

This song is from his 1989 album Stormfront. It was his third US #1 hit. His previous two were It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me (1980 – Glass Houses) and Tell Her About It (1983 – An Innocent Man).

In the liner notes of Piano Man: The Very Best of Billy Joel, Joel explains that he wrote the song after a conversation with John Lennon’s son Sean. “I started with Harry Truman because in 1949, the year I was born, Harry Truman was president,” said Joel. “From there it kind of wrote itself.”

Joel told biographer Fred Schruers: “What does the song really mean? Is it an apologia for the baby boomers? No, it’s not. It’s just a song that says the world’s a mess. It’s always been a mess, it’s always going to be a mess.”

I have to agree with Billy. Looking back to 1989, there have been a lot of things we could add… both bad and good. A bit of this and that… and also some of the other. We all try to “fight the fire” in our own ways, try to make things a little better. We are a diverse nation so the concept of better will vary by person. We’re often fighting at cross purposes. The “fire” will go on… and on and on and on… Humans apparently are not all that intelligent.

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

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, 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

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

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 Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

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
J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say?

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline
Ayatollah’s in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China’s under martial law
Rock and Roller Cola wars, I can’t take it anymore

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
But when we are gone
It will still burn on and on and on and on
And on and on and on and on…

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

What do you think? Did I get the prompt right or should I stop with the loose interpretations and stick to the actual words? What song would you choose?

(We had a better week but sleep, or the lack of sleep, continues to be a major issue. Ben got me up at 1:15am one night, and 4 something am two nights later. I continue to lurk and hope. I will return but I have no idea when. I miss being part of your Bloggy Life… I miss you.)

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HUGS!

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