Pete Wentz and Billy Joel. Shutterstock (2)
Fall Out Boy put a contemporary twist on a traditional rock hit by updating the lyrics to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Begin the Fireplace” greater than 30 years after its 1989 launch.
The brand new model, which the Grammy-nominated group launched on Thursday, June 28, swaps out the unique’s popular culture and political references for among the most notable occasions of the previous three a long time — together with the dying of Michael Jackson, former President Donald Trump’s impeachments, local weather change, the Black Lives Matter motion, Taylor Swift and Kanye West’s feud and extra.
Bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz gave Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe perception into the music alternative, revealing in a brand new interview that he had been making an attempt to the band to do a brand new model of the tune “for thus lengthy.” It lastly got here into fruition after bandmate Patrick Stump gave the OK.
“I bear in mind listening to the unique once I was little and I used to be like, ‘I don’t know what half these items is,’” Wentz, 44, defined. “And it made me lookup a bunch of these things. So, it was simply attention-grabbing serious about the stuff we would come with versus you wouldn’t. As a result of there’s some stuff that was within the unique that form of is misplaced to the sands of time. what I imply? So yeah, we simply did it. We put it collectively. It’s only a enjoyable, goofy factor.”
Fall Out Boy’s reimagined model mentions every part from Queen Elizabeth II’s dying to the September 11 terrorist assaults, however Wentz famous that they weren’t frightened about following a timeline. “It’s just a bit bit out of order, however it’s what it’s,” he advised Apple Music. “Hear, we needed the Web to nonetheless have one thing to complain about.”
One occasion the group selected to depart out of the brand new lyrics was the COVID-19 pandemic. “That’s all anyone talked [about],” Wentz defined. “It felt like there was a few issues that felt, like, a bit on the nostril. After which there have been a few issues the place it was like Bush V. Gore, [and] we wanted the rhyme.”
Patrick Stump, Andy Hurley, Pete Wentz, and Joe Trohman of Fall Out Boy. Hahn Lionel/ABACA/Shutterstock
Even when Fall Out Boy’s tackle “We Didn’t Begin the Fireplace” doesn’t land with listeners, Wentz stated he’s pleased with what they created. “I believe that the fantastic thing about the best way that music and artwork works now could be that you just put one thing on the market,” he shared. “If it misses, it form of simply doesn’t go anyplace. And if individuals prefer it, then it turns into a factor. However you possibly can put much more issues form of out into the ether and it simply turns into white noise, if individuals don’t prefer it.”
Joel, 74, has but to touch upon the duvet. He beforehand opened up about individuals’s opinions on his traditional music, which was featured on his 1989 album Storm Entrance, throughout an October 2021 episode of the “We Didn’t Begin the Fireplace: The Historical past Podcast.”
“The one factor I’ve heard about that music from individuals is, ‘I hate that music!’” he revealed on the collection, which dedicates an episode to each reference from the music’s lyrics. “Some individuals hate that music. It’s one of the vital hated issues I ever wrote! And I don’t get the hate.”
Joel famous on the time that he “solely wrote about stuff I needed to listen to” — and that it was simply “dumb luck” that the music grew to become successful. “I didn’t even choose the singles; the file firm picks what’s going to be a single,” he continued. “I hand them an album of a bunch of songs and go, ‘Right here, now it’s your turkey. You work it out.’”
