Soundtrack of Your Life: Remakes

 Soundtrack of Your Life is an occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.

Date: February 22, 2025, 9 a.m. hour

Place: Chuze Fitness in Uptown Albuquerque

Song:  "Beds Are Burning"

Artist: Awolnation ft. Tim McIlrath

Song:  "We Didn't Start the Fire"

Artist: Fall Out Boy

Irony Matrix: 1.9 out of 10

Comment: I was on the elliptical at the gym and heard "Beds Are Burning" come on, and it just didn't seem right; it didn't have the oomph that I was used to. That's because it wasn't the 1987 original -- by Midnight Oil -- but instead a cover from a couple of years ago by Awolnation. I don't know what exactly is lacking in the new version, but it never achieves lift-off. Is it merely that the vocals are not by Peter Garrett, the frontman for Midnight Oil? Was there something about the urgency of the Reagan era that doesn't translate to the Trump era? Do I remember the video and a fonder time from my (relative) youth? Is it just a crappier version? The new version has a techno feel to it (and, for some reason, a "Munsters" groove line). There's just no snap to it, however. And the vocals (by Tim McIlrath of Rise Against) feel shouted; so, props to Garrett as the O.G. in this one. Here is the original.

 

And then there is the infamous 2023 sequel to Billy Joel's much-ribbed 1989 original of "We Didn't Start the Fire." Let's call the original the beginning of the end of the MTV era. It was a list song, churning through Joel's 40 years on earth (he was born in 1949) and hopscotching along the global highlights of the second half of the 20th century, a "This Is Your Life" to all Boomers still stuck on JFK's assassination and the arrival of the Beatles and biding their time until Fox News would come along in the mid '90s. 

Joel's song actually reached No. 1 on the charts (he had only three in his career, and the other two are just as forgettable). I didn't have anything against the song -- it's clever in spots -- and I'm a pretty big Billy Joel fan; I just was more interested in Nine Inch Nails at the time. Anyway, Fall Out Boy (!) thought it would be a good idea to carry the torch and draft a whole new version, updating the years from 1989 to 2023. From a simple Google search, I learned that the band has been savagely roasted over it. I'm sure it's not much worse than the original (I haven't listened to it closely), but it's certainly not essential listening. And maybe the point here is that Joel made a lot of things look easy; I'd put him in the songwriting category a notch below the ones at the top -- Paul Simon, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Lennon-McCartney and Robert Pollard. In his prime he was brilliant. I haven't heard anyone say that about Fall Out Boy, but then I'm a little out of touch with the emo kids.

It did remind me that I've been working on a joke forever about taking my own stab at updating "We Didn't Start the Fire." It goes like this. "I see Fall Out Boy did an update of Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire' by writing new lyrics that touch on all the crucial people and world-shattering events that have rocked the globe since his song was released, right up to the present day. I worked really hard on it. I think it encapsulates every key moment that led us to where we are at this moment. Like the original, you have to sing it really fast, listing things rapid-fire. And I had to memorize the whole thing. I think I can't do it for you now. (Long pause.) Here goes:

"Kim Kardashian

Donald Trump.

"Thank you."

That's the bit. No need to embed a video of either version, right?