Who From Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ Is Still Alive Today?

Lauren Novak March 26, 1:00 pm

NEW YORK, NY - MAY 25: Billy Joel performs at Billy Joel In Concert - New York, New York at Madison Square Garden on May 25, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images) — Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

What To Know

Only three of the 59 people mentioned in Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” are still alive, according to a recent Reddit analysis.
Billy Joel was inspired to write the song by a conversation about generational struggles.
The song remains culturally relevant, with audiences resonating with its nostalgic lyrics.

It may be hard to believe, but Reddit just confirmed that only 3 of the 59 people mentioned in Billy Joel‘s 1989 hit song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” are still alive.

The news came from a fan who updated the chart after the recent death of Brigitte Bardot at age 91. The fan made an interesting chart, shared to Reddit’s r/dataisbeautiful subreddit and explained, “Line starts when someone is born. Ends when they die. And a dot for when they did the thing they were mentioned for in the song.”

The three people who are still alive are musicians Bob Dylan and Chubby Checker, along with criminal Bernhard Goetz. He shot four Black teenagers on the New York subway in 1984.

Joel once explained why he decided to write the unusual, but catchy song. He said that growing up, he got really into reading and history and decided to compile the lyrics around the time he was turning 40 as a way to look back on everything that happened during his lifetime.

According to People, he said, “Well, I was talking with this guy in his 20s, and he was going on about how tough it is to grow up today with AIDS and crack and the homeless. I said, ‘Yeah, I know how you feel. I felt that way growing up.’ And he took exception to that. He said, ‘C’mon, nothing happened in the ’50s and early ’60s.’ And the history teacher in me went, ‘Whoa, didn’t you ever hear of the Korean War, the Suez Canal, the Hungarian freedom fighters?'”

Although the song is not his typical sound, audiences related to it and found it hard not to reminisce along with the lyrics. In 2023, the band Fall Out Boy released a new version with events and references from the 1990s through the present day.