Billy Joel vs. R.E.M.

Awhile ago, a friend of mind sent me, via a Facebook message, the "assignment" of comparing and contrasting Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" and R.E.M.'s "It's the End of World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)." This friend is someone I've known since about sixth grade, and we often go back and forth about music and pop culture. Anyway, this is my extemely off-the-cuff reply to his challenge. Thought you might find it fun:

Billy Joel's “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is a litany of baby boomer-era cultural touchstones, and in the chorus Billy basically, in typical curmudgeonly Billy Joel style, says, "look, if you're pissed off about how f***ed up things are now, don't look at us (i.e. the boomers), it was already f***ed up when we got here, but we've been trying to make it better, so there!--and you know what, it'll probably continue to be f***ed up after we're dead." Billy Joel is the official apologist of the Baby Boomer generation.

REM's "It's the End of the World..." has the same rapid-fire vocal delivery as "...Fire", but with lyrics considerably more obtuse and stream-of-consciousness (gee, real shocker that Stipe would be obtuse and stream of conscious, eh). In the chorus, REM (befitting their age--tale end of Baby Boom generation and pretty close to Gen X) go for full-on irony with "the world's falling apart, but we're having a blast." This seems a good commentary on the Reagan-era, where everyone seemed to be basking in materialistic yuppiedom (except for bohemian hipsters like REM, who were casting a critical eye on the proceedings).Stylistically, of course, both songs are pretty darned similar--machine gun verses and choruses that summed up what the verses were getting at. However, Billy's song is smoothed out and shiny, Phil Ramone- produced MOR, while REM is clanking, slightly spastic/slightly punky alternapop college boy music.