Song Analysis: We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel

Every song has a story to tell, and some contain hidden stories or lessons, while others are completely blatant. In Billy Joel’s song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” he does not hesitate to be very obvious with what he tries to prove, which is how all of the events in his song contribute to one large fire. I chose to remediate Joel’s song because it spoke to me with historical context. When researching the song, I read a majority of the history behind it and decided to reflect upon it in a visual picture collage, combining a majority of the elements he mentions with pictures--all circled around a fire in the middle. I decided to also make red-dyed cupcakes reflecting the fire Joel speaks of and ice them with a flame, yet placing an X over it, since he claims “we didn’t start the fire.” Both of my remediation’s have elaborate histories, first starting with the collage.

There is quite an intricate past of collages, beginning in the early 1900’s. The history of collages goes back to the time of Picasso. That is not really that long at all, so collages are relatively new compared to painting which began during the time of cavemen. “The first deliberate and innovative use of collage in fine art came in two works by Picasso in the spring of 1912” (Kachur 1). Picasso was not considered the one who created the collage, but rather the first to apply it to modern art in that time. It is not only fabulous artists who use collages. A lot of teenagers may create collages without even knowing it, just by assembling pictures of their family and friends, or of magazine clippings. Collages can be extremely dynamic or exceptionally simple, depending on who the artist is and the purpose of the piece of art. Collages are a great way to visually repres...

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... a bookmark in history representing the events people had to encounter throughout those 40 years.

Works Cited

Delahunt, Michael. “Collage.” Artcyclopedia.com. Web. 5 Nov. 2009.

Kachur, Lewis. “Collage.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 5 Nov. 2009.

Musser, George. “Cupcakes.” Academic Search Premier. Sept. 2009. Web. 4 Nov. 2009.

Stern, Fred. “A short history of collage (The Arts).” World and I. Dec. 2008. General OneFile. Web. 4 Nov. 2009.

“We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Wikipedia.com. 30 Oct. 2009. Web. 4 Nov. 2009.

Delahunt, Michael. “Collage.” Artcyclopedia.com. Web. 5 Nov. 2009.

Kachur, Lewis. “Collage.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 5 Nov. 2009.

Stern, Fred. “A short history of collage (The Arts).” World and I. Dec. 2008. General OneFile. Web. 4 Nov. 2009.

“We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Wikipedia.com. 30 Oct. 2009. Web. 4 Nov. 2009.