The Awfulness of Billy Joel

This isn’t exactly a revelation, but Ron Rosenbaum inexplicably fails to include the song that is arguably BJ’s five-minute shite-load, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” When I teach historiography and methods every other year, I typically devote about ten minutes on the first day to that particular crime against history. By now, most students are young enough to have no memories of the song; I, by contrast, had to share a dorm suite with a guy who thought it was the greatest thing he’d ever heard until he got hooked on that unendurable Skid Row album.

Leaving aside the inscrutable chorus, the topical stupidity of the song is boundless (e.g., Why mention Malekov and not Khrushchev? Are the “rock and roller cola wars” really the final straw, provoking Joel to shake his fist and declare that “I can’t take it anymore?”) But I think the song’s essential malignance is summed up by one line: “JFK, blown away — what else do I have to say?” Because, of course, nothing is quite as historically self-explanatory as the fucking Kennedy assassination.

God, I want to punch something right now.