People were pushing that cover on me and I was just like, ugghghgh, I'm not a giant fan of the original but that take is really shallow plus a total mishmash. It's not in order! They're not even singing in fucking key!
I really like your idea about the song structure -- to me it also reads as very personal (he was born in 1949) so of course there's that big focus on 63, which was like a prelude of 68 when everything really came crashing down. The video kind of does that too, altho it weirdly falls down with the last verse. And like Mrissa says, it came out in late 1989, less than two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution. de Klerk meeting with Mandela. And the supposed birth of the WWW, altho I don't know if Joel knew about it -- but the song eerily forecasts that too, with its hectic pace and five-second clips and fleeting references. It is super US-centric, but when I think of it as the musical summing-up of a Boomer who actually lived through all that, it bugs me less.
no subject
I really like your idea about the song structure -- to me it also reads as very personal (he was born in 1949) so of course there's that big focus on 63, which was like a prelude of 68 when everything really came crashing down. The video kind of does that too, altho it weirdly falls down with the last verse. And like Mrissa says, it came out in late 1989, less than two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution. de Klerk meeting with Mandela. And the supposed birth of the WWW, altho I don't know if Joel knew about it -- but the song eerily forecasts that too, with its hectic pace and five-second clips and fleeting references. It is super US-centric, but when I think of it as the musical summing-up of a Boomer who actually lived through all that, it bugs me less.
But Seriously Yolks: Avengers Didn't Start The Fire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-onk-Qm7ATw