Today music video of the day is “We didn’t start the Fire” by Billy Joel (1989)

From his album “Storm Front”. This song Billy Joel belts out about a 100 headlines that happened between 1949 (the year Billy Joel was born) until 1989 when the song was release.

The idea for this song came about when Billy Joel ran into Sean Lennon in a recording studio. A then 21 old year Lennon said that it was a terrible time being 21 and Joel replied that they were harder times when he was growing up in the the 1950’s. Lennon believed that nothing really bad happened during that time frame. From that conversation Joel was compelled to write this song.

The music video was directed by Christ Blum and centers around a middle class couple in the 1950’s that wanted to achieved the “American dream”.  Their upwards mobility is show by there kitchen getting constantly upgraded to the next best upgrade by decade until the 1980’s. While all of this is happening Billy Joel plays the all knowing but “invisible” singer clad in all black and wears sunglasses. He is the only one that knows the trouble times ahead because he sees dark times which the video creates Joel space of a  black table that is on fire and a bunch of black and white photos of history’s darker times.

Until Next time!