Fall Out Boy’s We Didn’t Start the Fire cover is historically bad

The latest salvo in the internecine let-them-fight between Millennials and Boomers comes from Fall Out Boy, who just covered Billy Joel’s headache-inducing earworm “We Didn’t Start the Fire” with a update of events that have transpired in the 35 years since.

Where Joel’s day-zero cringegasm (take it from me, folks — I was in high school at the time) at least makes its references chronologically, Fall Out Boy’s update is all over the map. John Wayne Bobbitt, a 1993 movie, is paired with the Boston Marathon Bombings that occurred 20 years later. I can’t tell if “Keaton Batman/Bush v. Gore” means the 1989 Tim Burton movie or The Flash, but either way, they’re at least a decade apart.

Even worse is the tastelessness in lyrics like “Shinzo Abe blown away,” then rhyming George Floyd with Metroid. This song made me as sad as Hank Hill did in “The Notebook”. King of the Hill episode about religious rock: “You’re not making Christianity any better, you’re just making rock n’ roll worse!”

The single is now available. Listen if you dare; we really don’t recommend it. Fall Out Boy will be on tour this summer in North America, (Dallas on Thursday, Phoenix Friday), and Europe this fall.