"We Didn't Start the Fire" is a song by Billy Joel that references a catalog of headline events during his lifetime, from March 1949 to 1989, when the song was released on his album Storm Front. The events are mixed with a refrain asserting "we didn't start the fire". The song was a number-one hit in the U.S.
The song and video have been interpreted as a rebuttal to criticism of Joel's Baby Boomer generation, from both its preceding and succeeding generations, that they were responsible for much of the world's problems. The song's title and refrain imply that the frenzied and troubled state which others were criticizing had been the state of the world since long before his generation's time, but that this was being ignored by their critics.
