WE DIDN’T PICK THE LIAR – (We Didn’t Start the Fire)

This one is a collaborative parody with the phenomenal lyrics by Eric TF Bat – something which took an inordinate amount of work, as you’ll see. This parody actually only summarizes the first six months of the reign of “— — —” but it’s enough to get the gist of that reality packed into a few short minutes of singing. There’s been so much that we’re in danger of forgetting – so you can use this as an occasional and very important reminder.

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LYRICS TO WE DIDN’T PICK THE LIAR

Music by Billy Joel – Lyrics by LYRICS BY Eric TF Bat
Check out his page here: http://flurf.net/batpage/WeDidntPickTheLiar

You’ll notice that the lyrics are all clickable links That’s because this parody is a series of keywords that represent specific events that happened in the last year. To read more about any one of those events, just click on a word or phrase and it will take you to the corresponding news article. It’s like a self-fact-checking parody!

Fake news, WikiLeaks, alt facts, Spicer speaks,
No divestment, foreign payment, National Patriot Day.
Voter fraud accusation,  climate fact elimination,
Biggest crowd in all the nation, meet the CIA.
Bernhard Langer, ISIS plan, Bannon’s access, Muslim ban,
Foreign Service all resign, nominee announced online
Holocaust not just Jews, Frederick Douglass living news
Arnold’s ratings, nominating, Aussies on the hotline.

We didn’t pick the liar.
But the implications last for generations
We didn’t pick the liar.
No we didn’t choose him, but we’d love to lose him.

Uninvited, Bowling Green, Flynn resigning, courts convene,
North Korea testing us, fashion news advice
Budget fudging it! History judging it.
Thing in Sweden last night, travel ban on ice.
Trans kids, arms race, ACA Repeal/Replace,
Wire tapping, Russian files, NATO payment, Rupert smiles,
Pence vote, tax return, no collusion, u-turn,
Sally Yates, Gorsuch waits, daughter’s just an intern

We didn’t pick the liar.
and the consequences now assault our senses.
We didn’t pick the liar.
We did not elect him, but we must eject him.

Did he use gas or not, Mar-A-Lago costs a lot
Tomahawk, Manafort, pre-existing sex assault
Hundred days, hack attacks,  delay with the income tax
Wall funding somersault, Syria’s Obama’s fault

Steve Bannon loses ground, Sergey Lavrov comes around,
Science cries, Comey flies, health insurance rates rise.
Fake news media, thought it would be easier
Walls or fences, British spies, no one ever really dies.

We didn’t pick the liar.
But the implications will impact all nations
We didn’t pick the liar.
No we didn’t want him, so we’re here to taunt him.

Paris deal, body slam, Flynn was not Obama’s man
Probe concerns, Comey burns, yet to see what we will learn
Eric’s cancer charity, I expect your loyalty,
Partial ban makes it through, Perry loving CO2
Susan, Lisa, John McCain, put transgenders on the train,
Covfefe tweet today! What else is there left to say?

We didn’t pick the liar.
Now the news we’re learning is a bit concerning.
We didn’t pick the liar
Someone should have warned him we were bound to scorn him.

Scaramucci interview, Dad told Donny what to do,
Priebus leaving us, mail pranks are deceiving us,
Kelly, Mueller, polling slump, White House is a real dump
Interns mainly white men, Scaramucci gone again
“Fire and fury”, climate hoax, Secret Service going broke,
General Pershing, “many sides”, “alt-left”, Bannon fired
Monuments are coming down, council members leaving town
Neo-Nazis versus clowns, feeling like I’m gonna drown!

We didn’t pick the liar.
But the implications last for generations
We didn’t pick the liar.
But with every dawn
it seems to still go on, and on, and on, and on…

We didn’t pick the liar.
But the implications will impact all nations
We didn’t pick the liar.
No we didn’t want him, so we’re here to taunt him.

Lyrics Copyright 2018 Eric TF Bat

We Didn’t Start the Fire was written by singer/songwriter Billy Joel. The original song consists of rapid-fire references to over a hundred events that were in the newspaper headlines from Joel’s year of birth to the year he wrote the song. That would be a 40 year span from 1949 to 1989. The song was released on Billy Joel’s 1989 album titled Storm Front  and was nominated for Grammy Award for Record of the Year. The song was also a No. 1 hit in the United States.

Joel has said, “I’m a history nut. I devour books. At one time I wanted to be a history teacher”. According to his mother, he was a bookworm by the age of seven. Unlike most of Joel’s songs, the lyrics were written before the melody, owing to the somewhat unusual style of the song. The song was a huge commercial success and was Joel’s third Billboard No. 1 hit. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year.

Joel has said, “There’s an element of malevolence in the song; it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop.” He has mentioned having mixed feelings about the song. “It’s a nightmare to perform live, because if I miss one word, it’s a train wreck.” He has called it a “novelty song” that does not “really define me as well as album songs that probably don’t get played”, and has also criticized the song on strictly musical grounds. In 1993, when discussing it with documentary filmmaker David Horn, Joel compared its melodic content unfavorably to his song “The Longest Time“: “Take a song like ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire.’ It’s really not much of a song….If you take the melody by itself, terrible. Like a dentist drill.”

When asked if he could do a follow-up about the next couple of years after the events that transpired in the original song, he commented “No, I wrote one song already and I don’t think it was really that good to begin with, melodically.”