Pete Wentz Explains Why Fall Out Boy’s New ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ Doesn’t Mention COVID

Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz talks about 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 the original release in 1989 and today.

In the original theme, there was: “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 were changed in the Fall Out Boy version to: “Captain Planet, Arab Spring, Los Angeles 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 for the lyrics, and the reasoning behind one big omission. “Dude, honestly, this idea has been brewing for a long time,” Wentz told Zane Lowe on Apple Music. “I’ve been asking someone to do this for a long time because it seems perfect to me. 30 years later … I wanted to do it.”

He said: “So we’re 34 years later, I think. I’ve been trying for four years to get someone to do it. And finally Patrick [Stump] He said, ‘We should do it,’ and this song was… I remember hearing the original version when I was little and I was like, ‘I don’t know what the point of this is. ,’ and it made me look up a lot of things. So it was interesting to think about what we would include and what we wouldn’t. Because there are some things that were in the original that have been lost to the sands of time. Do you understand me? So yes, we did. we put it together. It’s kind of funny, silly, you know what I mean?”

He said: “Listen, we did the best we could. It’s very, very, very difficult. His is not quite in chronological order, but it’s more in chronological order than ours. We wanted from us just the JFK line flying under. airs, and clearly, I think World Trade was a little bit more… probably was… People probably felt the same way Do you remember where you were or whatever. What’s up. Listen, we wanted the internet to still have something to complain about.”

Of the lyrics that were left out, Wentz said, “There were things that we didn’t include because we thought other things were more important and other things less.

“What I liked about the original is that it’s kind of a time capsule where things are, but they’re not judged or anything like that. It’s like, ‘These are the things that happened.’ Characters are triumphant and others are desperate. , it’s the tapestry of human life. I think we tried to make it that way.”

And speaking about why they left out references to COVID, the bassist/songwriter revealed: “It’s like nobody’s talking about it… You know what I mean? Don’t know I had. There were a few things that seemed a little on the nose. And then there were a few things where it was like… Bush V. Gore, we needed the rhyme.”

In other Fall Out Boy news, the pop-punk band will appear on the song ‘Electric Touch’ from Taylor Swift’s upcoming LP ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Verson)’.