People Can't Believe What Top Band Rhymed with 'George Floyd' in New Cover of 'We Didn't Start the Fire'
A new cover of Billy Joel’s 1989 hit song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” has received mixed reviews, to say the least.
Fall Out Boy, a band with multiple hit singles, released an updated version of Joel’s song featuring references to prominent people and events from the past 34 years.
The new version sparked a variety of criticisms, including the band’s decision to rhyme “George Floyd” with “Metroid.”
For those who do not recall, Joel’s original song amounted to a mishmash of rhymed historical references set to an upbeat theme that invaded a listener’s head and remained there for days.
The catchy song’s lyrics, which blend the political and the cultural, sent younger listeners scrambling for encyclopedias.
A few of the lines went as followed:
Harry Truman, Doris Day,
Red China, Johnny Ray
South Pacific
Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio.
Fall Out Boy’s updated version followed the same pattern. The George-Floyd-Metroid line reads:
Meghan Markle, George Floyd
Burj Khalifa, Metroid.
The choice left some people unimpressed.
On Twitter, one user tweeted: “Fall out boy racking their brains for 40 seconds trying to figure out what rhymes with George Floyd before finally settling on Metroid.”
Fall out boy racking their brains for 40 seconds trying to figure out what rhymes with George Floyd before finally settling on Metroid pic.twitter.com/4WOEYYLOM0
— John Halo (@EpicMasterChief) June 28, 2023
Another user, who identifies himself as a “washed up game developer,” tweeted: “what do you mean ‘fall out boy released a new version of We Didnt Start the Fire where they rhyme ‘George Floyd’ with ‘Metroid” what am i supposed to do with that.”
what do you mean “fall out boy released a new version of We Didnt Start the Fire where they rhyme ‘George Floyd’ with ‘Metroid'” what am i supposed to do with that
— max turnbull 🐀 (@max_oats) June 28, 2023
Slate took issue with the inclusion of “Metroid” for any reason: “Why is Metroid in there? Metroid was released in 1986!”
Morgan Hines, oddly enough a USA Today food reporter, noted that “there have been plenty of iterations” of Metroid since 1986 “so we’ll cut the band some slack.”
On the whole, the Floyd-Metroid rhyme-pairing kerfuffle seems to revolve around the inclusion of something lazy, frivolous and date-inappropriate.
Floyd’s appearance in the song might rankle some readers who still feel enraged by the riots, the moral posturing and the veneration of a career criminal that marred the already miserable summer of 2020.
In fairness, Fall Out Boy’s mention of Floyd amounts to no more of a political endorsement than Joel’s reference to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the song’s original version.
The new song, however, takes chronological liberties bound to annoy any grumpy, middle-aged writer.
Joel’s original version followed historical chronology, from the mid-40s to the late-80s.
Fall Out Boy’s new version, on the other hand, opens by rhyming “Arab Spring” (2011) with “Rodney King” (1991).
Surely there is a lesson there about declining historical consciousness or at least about “kids these days.”
Either way, get off my lawn.
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