An Official Statement on Fall Out Boy’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ Remake

About 24 hours ago, I became aware that a Fall Out Boy cover of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire would be dropping today. A sense of deep, almost existential dread swept over me almost immediately. A slow rollout of the lyrics did precious little to allay any anxiety or nervousness. This was the exact moment I knew all of us in the FOB community were in for some trouble.

Like many other superfans, I scrambled to the boards to see if it was too late to do anything about this and discovered that, like it or not, this was something that was going to happen and we were going to have to wear it like an inside fastball for the good of the team.

And that’s what we’re going to do. Because the song, which debuted this morning, is a rare unforced error during what has been arguably the brightest stretch of Fall Out Boy in 15 years.

There’s no sugar-coating this. They took a big swing at trying to recapture a specific song and moment in time. And they went down swinging. Which is a real shame because Fall Out Boy has had incredible success re-imagining classics — from Michael Jackson’s Beat It to to the iconic Ghostbusters theme.

The road to ruin is paved with good intentions yet this will still be hell on an engine that’s been gaining steam off the heels of the pitch-perfect So Much For Stardust album. A real fan admits that there’s been some setbacks in the band’s two-decade run from relative obscurity of North Shore garages to one of the largest acts in the world.

They just started a tour with arguably the best setlist in the group’s history. A sports blog recently wrote that they are all the way back. There’s still plenty to celebrate.

We’ll look forward to the next project and embrace it with open arms. We’ll just probably not ever listen to this again.