Which of these U.S. presidents is NOT mentioned in "We Didn't Start the Fire"?
Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" is a four-minute history lesson disguised as a pop song, cramming 40 years of American chaos into one incredibly catchy tune. He name-drops several commanders-in-chief along the way, but when you're trying to fit four decades of history into a single song, somebody's getting left out. Which of these U.S. presidents who served during Joel's timeline failed to make the cut?
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Correct Answer: Gerald Ford
(Source)By the time Billy Joel released "We Didn't Start the Fire" in 1989, he had experienced nine presidents. Joel starts with Harry Truman in 1949 (the year he was born) and races through decades of presidents, scandals, wars, and pop culture moments until 1989. After Truman, Joel gave both Nixon and Kennedy two mentions, Eisenhower one and Reagan one. But the song talked about more than just presidents. It references Sputnik, Hemingway, Woodstock, "The Catcher in the Rye," and literally more than 100 other things. So unfortunately for Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Gerald Ford, Joel didn't find them memorable enough to get shout-outs in his chart-topping hit.
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