My version of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is better than Fall Out Boy’s version. Why?

Reason One: Mine is in chronological order. Theirs is very clearly not. You could really hear the care that Billy Joel put into his in terms of getting everything to not only rhyme but to be in chronological order. Fall Out Boy’s version sounds like it’s just cashing in on the nostalgia hit. “Remember this? And this? And this other thing? Who cares that they’re not in order!”

Reason Two: Mine rhymes better, let’s be honest. Like what the hell is this verse, Fall Out Boy?

Elon Musk, Kaepernick, Texas failed electric grid
Jeff Bezos, climate change, white rhino goes extinct
Great pacific garbage patch, Tom DeLonge and aliens
Mars rover, Avatar, Self-driving electric cars
S-S-R-Is, Prince and the Queen die
World Trade Second plane
What else do I have to say?

The “Tom DeLonge and aliens” line does not fit in there at all (and how is that a top event in 1989-2023?). What the hell is that supposed to rhyme with? And “World Trade, second plane” is such a weird-ass way to shove that MAJOR event in there.

Here’s one of my verses:

O.J. Simpson, Amazon, Oklahoma City Bomb
Hale-Bopp, boy band pop, Dolly the sheep
Harry Potter, Princess Di, Toy Story, Columbine
Napster, Euro, Ted Kaczynski
ExxonMobil, Sarajevo, Mark McGwire, Galileo
Nunavut, Albright, Titanic, baseball strike,
AOL, Deep Blue, Mad Cow, Google
Bill Gates, Y2K, Clinton and Lewinsky

That’s better rhyming. You know it is. I was very careful in matching Joel’s rhyme scheme.

Reason Three: I’m sure I missed a lot of big events in my time frame, but DID THEY FORGET TO PUT IN COVID???

Like, I wrote mine back in 2018 because I wanted it to cover the first 30 years of my life (1988-2018) so I have an excuse, but REALLY? How do you forget a global pandemic?

Just…ugh. It could have been so much better, yo.

Edit: I’m not the only one who thinks this was sloppily done.