Billy Joel’s song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” names numerous events, ideas, and objects that were prevalent in popular culture and politics during the latter half of the 20th Century, many of which were controversial such as the creation of the hydrogen bomb, President Nixon’s Watergate scandal, and the Cold War between the United States and Russia. Covering a broad range of topics in his lyrics, Joel highlights seemingly innocent ideas like the popularity and fame of various actors/actresses, musicians, and athletes with the elections and deaths of political leaders. Besides the cultural and political references that were made and contrasted against each other, Joel also juxtaposes generally positive consumer goods such as popular novels, entertainment, and items of leisure like television and cars with the manipulative marketing of products like soda, clothing, and medicine. This clash of economic, cultural, and political themes, along with the representative examples in the lyrics carrying either positive or negative connotations, all build up to the following chorus: “We didn’t start the fire / It was always burning since the world’s been turning / We didn’t start the fire / No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it” (Billy Joel). This chorus repeats several times throughout the song, usually following a reference to an event with a negative connotation, such as President J.F.K.’s death as referenced by Joel in the lyrics, “J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say?” (Billy Joel).
Source: YouTube Channel Matthew Manley
Though the “fire” that Joel refers to in his song can be symbolic of the problems that are occurring around the world in politics, economics, and culture, the lyrics of the chorus can also be applied to a different kind of “fire” described in Tom Angotti’s book New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate. In chapter two of Angotti’s book titled “The Real Estate Capital of the World”, he argues that New York City’s community planning was greatly influenced by finance, insurance, and real estate, or the FIRE sector for short. The chorus of Joel’s song seems to come from the perspective of bystanders watching the problems of the world continue to grow as a fire would when the flames spread to its surroundings, and the source of the fire is not from the bystanders, but rather the problems that the world has been facing since the very beginning of time. In comparison to Angotti’s view of the FIRE sector, finance, insurance, and real estate has been an issue for New York City’s development and planning since its founding in the seventeenth century by “Peter Stuyvesant, the first political leader of the city, [who] was director of the Dutch West India Company, which at that time was one of the most powerful global trading monopolies” (Angotti 56). According to Angotti, “From the start, planning was in the hands of land surveyors who worked for powerful landowners…This also systematized racial segregation as an institution linked with private property” (Angotti 61). Similar to Joel’s lyrics that the fire “was always burning since the world’s been turning”, the FIRE sector has always been influencing New York City’s development and community planning since it was being developed as the town of New Amsterdam by Peter Stuyvesant and a small class of elites, who could buy and shape the land as they pleased.
The second half of Joel’s chorus in “We Didn’t Start the Fire” continues to present the perspective of bystanders who are watching the problems of the world intensify and grow like a consuming fire, but also shows that the bystanders watching the fire desired to extinguish the fire and were against it continuing to burn. This can be related to the FIRE sector, which continued to influence New York City’s development of neighborhoods by causing the displacement of residents and the division between class and race. Angotti explains how blockbusting was a method used by the FIRE sector in order to redevelop neighborhoods of the city in a way that benefitted private investors, but ultimately hurt city residents and caused segregation to increase in the city. He states, “Realtors exploit racial stereotypes and spread the word that people of color are moving in, which will lead property values to go down. White homeowners sell at below-market rates, and realtors turn around and sell to people of color at above-market rates” (Angotti 49-50). Besides blockbusting, other methods were used by the FIRE sector, such as redlining, which involved the marking of certain neighborhoods as restricted from getting loans for home mortgages based on race, and zoning, which allowed more freedom for real estate development that benefited powerful property owners and continued to separate the working class from the upper-class elites. With these methods being used by the FIRE sector, as well as the government policies which helped Robert Moses enact urban renewal on New York City, white residents were scared and pressured to leave New York City and live in the suburbs, while other non-white ethnic groups were given little choice but to stay and live in overpriced housing or be crowded into neighborhoods that were deemed slums and possibly slated for reconstruction. The “fire” that Angotti describes is very much like the “fire” Joel references in his lyrics in that both are the cause of problems, whether in New York City or around the world, and many people watching that fire continue to burn would desire to see it extinguished.
Questions to Consider:
1.) How does real estate continue to influence the current development of New York City?
2.) What possible solutions may there be to granting city residents more control of neighborhood development?
3.) How can the influence of the FIRE sector be regulated in order to protect residents from segregation and manipulation?
