Speaker 1: This is Jay Reid from Denver, Colorado, and you are
reliving the best of the eighties with Jason and d
On there. Surely you can't be serious podcast.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody. I hope you had a fantastic Christmas. We
told you last episode that we were done with the season,
and we are, and we haven't started the next season yet.
But we just can't get enough of giving you podcast information,
so we decided to do a little special episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is gonna be something new for us. We're
actually taking a deep dive in one particular song over
many episodes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We A few weeks ago, Jason had texted our
friend group and said, hey, who of the people mentioned
in We Didn't Start the Fire are still alive? There
are three and we're like ooh. And it was this
fantastic little trivia thing. But that got me started thinking, Hey,
I don't think I know every single thing about every
single bit of history in that song. What if we
did like a five minute episode twice a day where
we just talk about the guys that are mentioned in
that song.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're young like us, you didn't know
all this stuff and we didn't know any of it.
So we're going to go through it.
Speaker 2: Right so as the intro, though, we probably need to
tell you a little bit about the song. We are
late December of twenty twenty three, right now, exactly thirty
four years ago. In December of nineteen eighty nine, this
song was number one. It had just come out in September,
just a couple months earlier. It shot up the charts,
and it is probably one of the most memorable Billie
Joel songs he has.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. In fact, he made our nineteen
seventy eight list if you remember that. When he talks
about this song, he's like, you know, when I compare
this to like the Longest Time, it's not very good song.
In fact, he called it like it's like a dentist drill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not his favorite song that he has, but
it is a fun and like history lesson kind of song,
and it kind of came about in a unique way.
So he's just turned forties nineteen eighty nine. He was
born in nineteen forty nine. He's just turned forty. He's
at the recording studio. Sean Lennon is there. He's got
a buddy of his who's twenty one, and the buddy says, man,
this is like the worst time in the world to
be twenty one. Billy Joel's like, yeah, I can remember
when I was twenty one. It was kind of miserable too.
I mean we had, you know, war, civil rights, drug problems.
And the guy's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but like, nothing
really happened in the fifties when you were growing up,
And he was like, nothing happened. Have you heard of
the Korean War? Have you heard of the Suez Canal crisis?
And that little spark lit the fire? If you will
wow ad to this song.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. So this song was nominated for Record of
the Year, and I asked you when you said it
you brought it up to me. I was like, this
is either the last number one song of the eighties
or the second last song. And come to find out,
it's the second last song. Yep. And for those of
you trivia buffs like me who liked this type of stuff,
the last number one song of the nineteen eighties was
Another Day in Paradise by folks.
Speaker 2: Of course, it's Poconos. Y couldn't go anytime in the
eighties without Phil Collins.
Speaker 1: I do have a funny story about this song before
we go any further. So one person asked him, did
you write this to end when the Cold War was ending?
And Billy Joel's like, you know, it's just like my
luck to have the Soviets close up shop right at
the end of my song the worst time ever. Yeah,
it's funny.
Speaker 2: Interestingly enough, I mean, he was born in forty nine,
which is arguably when the Cold War started, and this
song comes out in eighty nine, which is arguably when
the Cold War ends. And obviously that's a lot of
the information that you have in this song, but there's
so much more, and so we hope you guys will
join us for these fun, little bite sized episodes that
we have for the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: It's right, five minutes, twice a day. It's gonna be fun.
Five minutes of fire