(December 31, 2025) – A data-conscious Reddit user named u/cavedave has been tracking the lifespans of a very exclusive club: the 59 people who were name-checked in Billy Joel’s 1989 No. 1 smash “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”
The news of famous French actress Brigitte Bardot’s death on Sunday (Dec. 28) means there are now only three people alive who were mentioned in the song, and all three are men: Chubby Checker, Bob Dylan, and Bernie Goetz.
For the musically focused folks who may not recall Goetz, he was the white man dubbed by NYC media as the “Subway Vigilante” who famously shot four black teenagers he accused of robbing him on a New York subway train in December 1984. Joel’s jaunt through the first 40 years of history in his lifetime culminated with the Goetz mention in the song’s last verse. Checker and Dylan, of course, are Rock & Roll Hall of Famers and two of the ten musicians mentioned in the song’s lyrics.
Of the 59 total people named, Checker, Dylan, and Goetz happened to be the only three who — like Joel — were born in the 1940s. All the others were born prior to 1940 with the exception of astronaut Sally Ride, who was born in 1951. She died in 2012. Prior to Bardot, the last two name-checked individuals who passed away were also females: Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 and American actress/singer Doris Day in 2019. Notably, 17 of the 59 people mentioned by Joel were still alive when the song was released in September of 1989. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 that December.
Joel’s jaunt through history notably spent much of its verses on the first fifteen years of his life before accelerating into a speed round to cover the last 25 years or so in the song’s final verse. The Chicago-based rock band Fall Out Boy famously updated the song in 2023 by picking up in 1989 and moving forward. Their song, covering a shorter period in history, only mentions 39 real people by name or nickname, including Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan twice (of course).
To see the entire list of 59 people in Joel’s original who were mentioned, and their lifelines as denoted in the Reddit-posted chart by u/cavedave, click here.
You can also enjoy both versions of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by clicking the YouTube clips below.
DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Bluesky at @djrobblog.bsky.social, X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog, on Facebook or on Meta’s Threads.
You can also register for free by selecting the menu bars above to receive notifications of future articles.