
Wikipedia pageviews this year for each line of ‘We Didn't Start the Fire’ - underyx
https://www.tomlum.com/remember-the-fire
======
mitko
I feel so surprised, didn't realize this song had such lyrics. Makes me really
want to come up with a modern set of lyrics and go to a karaoke. Something
like this:

~~~

Mitch McConnel, AOC, trade war, Cardi B,

fake news, ICO, arnold schwarzenegger,

wiki leaks, bitcoin, hacker news, facebook,

North Korea, South Sudan, annexing Crimea,

Game of Thrones, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Key and Peel,

Buttigieg, Snoop Dog, can you "feel the Bern"?

We didn't start the fire, sha-lalA-la-lAla

(and so on... please someone finish the rest)

~~~
Brendinooo
[https://twitter.com/we_didnt_start](https://twitter.com/we_didnt_start) was a
pretty hard-working bot for this sort of thing.

~~~
pronoiac
I’m bummed it didn’t match the rhythms, which isn’t impossible for a bot, see
[https://twitter.com/wiki_tmnt/status/1142070265150464000?s=2...](https://twitter.com/wiki_tmnt/status/1142070265150464000?s=20)
. Maybe I should make a follow up bot.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
you _should_ make one!!

------
ufo
On a related topic, apparently the lyrics for "We didn't start the fire" and
"It's the end of the world as we know it" by R.E.M work quite well when played
together, despite being thematically contradictory:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEYc8ar2Bpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEYc8ar2Bpw)

~~~
zhte415
This is remarkably good.

~~~
ufo
My favourite mashup of his is Village People's Y.M.C.A with Hans Zimmer's
Inception soundtrack. It really puts the lyrics in the spotlight

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DsoCe7C4Kmk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DsoCe7C4Kmk)

~~~
benj111
Not as good as Smack my Bitch up the Orinoco Flow! I'll admit, the lyrics
don't _quite_ work together in that one.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dLScpNjQbak](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dLScpNjQbak)

------
dheerajvs
We're Gonna Build a Framework:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2h0cbvsw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2h0cbvsw8)

~~~
robertAngst
Gave me PTSD from when I had to make a choice on a backend framework.

Thank you

------
lifeisstillgood
"England's got a new Queen" seems to have 1.5m views - how is that a more
popular search term than "richard nixon" or "marilyn monroe"?

I can only assume it's some kind of google suggested term after people type
england, and then they click on it thinking it's breaking news ...

But it seems a weird outlier

~~~
thih9
If you click on a term, you’ll see the page it leads to. I’m assuming they
manually assigned a page per line and then counted pageviews for each page.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
oh i thought it was actual search term

------
foobarbecue
Woah, I had never heard of the Syringe Tide
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syringe_tide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syringe_tide))...
which was caused by the Fresh Kills landfill??? You can't make this stuff up.

~~~
air7
> The landfill was opened in 1948 as a temporary landfill but by 1955 it
> became the largest landfill in the world

Indeed.

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genmon
Ha! I did the same in 2014, interesting to see how it has changed in that time
[http://interconnected.org/home/2014/12/12/billy_joel](http://interconnected.org/home/2014/12/12/billy_joel)

------
brownbat
Genius link here, in case anyone needs it:
[https://genius.com/1136925](https://genius.com/1136925)

~~~
geofft
Wikipedia's own article on the song has a brief summary of each event, too:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire)

------
randycupertino
Can't scroll down the page without hearing the song in my head.

------
Apocryphon
"Here Comes Another Bubble" uses the same tune:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I)

This song came out in 2007.

------
merpnderp
I just went through and clicked on the dozen or so I didn’t recognize, and I’m
much better off for doing it. This is a fun and great site.

------
uponcoffee
I think log scale or some different minimum/increment (start from the min
instead of zero) would make the chart more informative.

'England's got a new Queen' really skews the precieved scale as most
everything else is sub 500k, with it pulling ~1500k

------
DyslexicAtheist
somewhat related (sorry for going off on a tangent) ....

the lyrics from the Datarock's song "True Stories" are entirely made up of
Talking Heads song names.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRXGFcsrMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRXGFcsrMg)

Also the lyrics of the song _" Seed (2.0)"_ from The Roots have hidden
meaning[1] that kind of blew my mind (huge Roots fan here):

"I interpret the song to mean that they are attempting to unite the rock and
roll and hip hop genres. In this case, they are trying to plant the seed of
hip hop within the womb of rock and roll. He's having to do "fertilize another
against my lover's will" because hip hop is resistant to integrating other
musical styles. This interpretation is supported by the lines in the first
verse that go:

"She don't want no rock-n-roll She want platinum or ice or gold She want a
whole lotta somethin' to fold"

The lines are describing the hip hop culture obsession with money and "bling."
Whereas, "I lick the opposition because she don't take no birth control"
signifies that rock and roll is open and willing to integrate influences from
other genres.

If you're still doubtful, just listen to the beats underlying the song. You
have the heavy beats that are commonplace in hip hop and then the distinct
guitar riff."

[https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858522508/](https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858522508/)

The crazy thing is that Mos Def (now Yasiin Bey) takes that idea one step
further within his own lyrics by fusing every (hip-hop) song of his album "The
New Danger" with a different genre showing that Hip Hop does lend itself for
fusion. E.g. his song "The Rape Over" actually sounds like a song from "The
Doors". The whole "The New Danger" album is full of examples like this.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srx-
Wf5KrzQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srx-Wf5KrzQ)

------
Overtonwindow
A simple yet brilliant song

~~~
dehrmann
For being based on a gimmick, I agree. The thing is you can only have one of
these. Anything even vaguely similar will just a a knockoff. For a less
memorable gimmick song, anyone remember Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex?

What impresses me is Billy Joel's range as a musician and song writer. Piano
Man, Movin' Out, We Didn't Start the Fire, and Longest Time are all popular,
but so different.

~~~
dehrmann
I ran across another gimmick song this year: Netflix Trip by AJR. The narrator
basically relives his childhood over a Netflix binge of The Office.

------
Angostura
Fascinating. Although the tiny numbers for 'vaccine' and 'birth control' make
me query what's going on here

~~~
foota
Those seem to be pretty specific pages on wikipedia, likely to refer
specifically to what the song was.

Vaccine links to the polio vaccine and birth control to the (nearly empty)
wikipedia page for 'oral contraceptive pill'

~~~
ImaCake
The pill link is just a portal to other links. When I used DDG to search for
"the pill" it took me to one of the child links first, which has rich details
on one form of the pill.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_oral_contraceptive_pi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_oral_contraceptive_pill)

