This is not the first We Didn’t Start the Fire parody I’ve come across, but it’s the first I’ve seen for Generation X. It was published on YouTube in 2009 and features a guy named Patrick on Karaoke.
The original song by Billy Joel spans 40 years of history, 1949-1989. That includes a big chunk of events that shaped Generation X, but this was a song by a Boomer about Boomers. I may have liked it, but I never completely identified with it. This parody starts in 1970 and goes through 2008.
First Earth Day
Charles Manson Murders
Kent State Tragedy
Archie Bunker
Pentagon Papers
Hanoi Jane
Nixon in China
Munich Murders (1972 Olympics)
The Godfather
Secretariat – Triple Crown
Roe vs Wade
Apollo
End of Vietnam
Deep Throat
Watergate
Hank Aaron
Gas Shortage/Gas Lines
Jimmy Hoffa
Fall of Saigon
Bobby Fisher
Disco Balls
Voyager
Star Wars
President Jimmy Carter and Camp David
First Test Tube Baby
Three Mile Island Nuclear Disaster
Ayatollah Khomeini
Mt. St. Helens Volcano Eruption
Operation Eagle Claw
1980 Olympic Boycott
Sandra Day O’Connor – First Female Supreme Court Justice
Trickle Down Economics (Reganomics)
Rubik’s Cube
AIDS/HIV
Michael Jackson
MTV
Beirut Bombing
War on Drugs
Band Aid
Vanessa Williams Scandal
Mikhail Gorbachev
Crack Cocaine
New Coke
Nintendo
Africa Live Aid
Chernobyl
Haley’s Comet
Libya Bombing
Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
Iran Contra
Donna Rice and Gary Hart
Glasnost
Read My Lips, No New Taxes (President Bush)
Exxon Valdez
Berlin Wall
Pete Rose Banned from Baseball
Nelson Mandela
End of the Cold ward
Gulf War and Stormin’ Norman
SCUD Missiles
Rodney King
Ross Perot
Grunge Rock/Nirvana
Quayle (Potatoe)
Brady Bill
NAFTA
Waco/Branch Davidians
Tonya Harding
Apartheid
O.J. Simpson Murder Trial
Rwandan Genocide
Seinfeld
Forrest Gump
Oklahoma City Bombing
Jon Benet
Cloning
Boris Yeltsin
Death of Princess Diana
Monica Lewinsky Scandal
Y2K
Can you think of anything that shaped Generation X that he might have missed?
Parody was funny, but I always enjoy seeing pretentiousness get mocked 😉
Best description I ever saw of the Joel song went something like “terminal smugness expressed through a “Facts on File” dartboard session.”
Today, of course, we would say “Google.”