Billy Joel Listed 59 People in His Single, 'We Didn't Start the Fire.' After Brigitte Bardot's Death, Only 3 Remain Alive
- - Billy Joel Listed 59 People in His Single, 'We Didn't Start the Fire.' After Brigitte Bardot's Death, Only 3 Remain Alive
Angela AndaloroDecember 30, 2025 at 9:01 PM
0
ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP via Getty; Emma McIntyre/Getty
Brigitte Bardot (left), Billy Joel -
Brigitte Bardot has died at age 91
Bardot was one of the 59 people mentioned by name in Billy Joel's 1989 single, "We Didn't Start the Fire"
Just three of those 59 people, cited as newsy figures from the first 40 years of Joel's life, are still living
Brigitte Bardot's death means there is one less member of a very exclusive club.
Of the 59 people mentioned in the 1989 Billy Joel classic "We Didn't Start the Fire," just three remain living, a savvy, data-loving music fan shared on Reddit's r/dataisbeautiful subreddit. The chart was with news of the French actress' death at age 91.
u/cavedave shared his chart, a visual representation of all those named that shows their lifespans, represented by lines on the graph.
"Line starts when someone is born. Ends when they die. And a dot for when they did the thing they were mentioned for in the song," the creator explained.
— sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
The three people mentioned in the song who are still alive are musicians Bob Dylan and Chubby Checker, as well as Bernhard Goetz, who was charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon after shooting four Black teenagers after a dispute on a New York subway ride in 1984.
In a 1989 interview with Northeastern University's Larry Katz, Joel said the song was written as he was turning 40, and was "the history teacher in me coming out."
"When I was a kid, we didn’t have a television, so I read a lot. I became a history nut. I wanted to be a history teacher. I always wanted to know what happened to get us to where we are," he explained.
"Well, I was talking with this guy in his 20s, and he was going on about how tough it is to grow up today with AIDS and crack and the homeless. I said, ‘Yeah, I know how you feel. I felt that way growing up.’ "And he took exception to that. He said, ‘C’mon, nothing happened in the '50s and early ’60s.’ And the history teacher in me went, 'Whoa, didn't you ever hear of the Korean War, the Suez Canal, the Hungarian freedom fighters?' "
Joel says he then started jotting down all the names and events he could think of from his 40 years of life, noting, "It started looking like a rap song, so I just kept going."
In the 1993 documentary Billy Joel: Shades of Grey, he told director David Horn about his dislike for the song, despite its popularity.
"It's really not much of a song ... If you take the melody by itself, terrible, like a dentist drill," he said of the track.
Despite Joel's feelings about it, he continues to play it for audiences to this day. In June 2023, Fall Out Boy released a modernized cover of the song, picking up where the musician left off and filling the lyrics with references to events from the 1990s through the present day.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
