How To Prepare For Confident And Enjoyable Performance: We Didn’t Start The Fire.
This is a great, driving, punchy song with simple and direct and accessible melodies and rhythms that people really enjoy hearing.
Our arrangement is structurally the same as the original, but it has new lyrics.
You have already looked at what the parts are for the different sections of this. The challenge with this song is memorising the arrangement – what order the sections come in and how many times they repeat. To play something confidently, you need to be able to play the part that goes with each section easily – so pick a variation that is very comfortably within your current skill level – AND you need to know what’s coming next. This is written out for you below. If you set aside an hour and play along with the audios below, you’ll soon get the hang of it.
There is one audio that has the new lyrics over the full backing track. Use this to build confidence playing your parts and remembering the order. Then play along with the one that just has drums and vocals to work on playing the sections in the right order.
Vocals and full backing track
Vocals and drums only – with drum stab ending
Arrangement
Intro – Riff over chords -16 bars (= four times)
Verse 1 – 8 bars (= chords repeat twice)
Riff – 4 bars
Verse 1 second section -= 8 bars
Chorus 1 – 8 bars
Verse 2 – 16 bars (= chords repeat four times)
Chorus 2 – 8 bars
Middle 8 – 10 bars
Verse 3 – 8 bars
Chorus 3 – 8 bars
Verse 4 – 12 bars – (3 x round the chords)
Chorus 4 – 8 bars
Verse 5 – 16 bars with stops
Chorus – we will do this twice.
LYRICS
We Didn’t Start The Fire 2019 – cowriting credit to Luke Murray with contribution from Robin Thoms.
Planet Earth, Handmaid’s Tale, Red caps, Theresa May
Russian bots, Kardashians, Boris Johnson’s rash plan
Lady Gaga, Game of Thrones, Royal babies, Deadly drones
North Korea, South Korea, Supreme Court filler
RIFF x1
Hashtags, influencers, ice caps fast melting
Marvel, Sherlock Holmes, Referendum changes things
Populism, anti-vax, England’s got the same queen
Lock them up, send them back, Donald Trump loves Burger King
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
Epidemic swine flu, first female Dr Who,
Bohemian Rhapsody, Virtual Reality
Stranger things, walking dead, Gnomio and Juliet
Twin Peaks, Tim Peaks, dreams of galaxies
Flossing, Gangnam style, longest river still the Nile
Billie Eilish, Bey-hive, Justin Bieber, Stephen Fry
Ghost towns, killer clowns, punk rock, hip hop
Fleabag, Killing Eve, trouble with the back stop
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
MIDDLE 8 C Am Em D x 2
Burning man, UKIP, Led By Donkeys, Brexit
Kaepernick takes the knee, Green new deal, AOC
School strikes, Greta Thunberg, Attenborough’s earth wonder
Government shutdown, build a wall, tear it down,
Facebook, Twin towers, fragmenting global powers
Talent shows, Siri knows, how good is your insta pose?
Taylor Swift, Amazon, Bowie is a starman
Mary Berry bakes a lot, Stormzi’s great but where is rock?
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
You Tube, Harry Potter, Big brother, Johnny Rotten
Bollywood, Dollywood, surgery on live TV
Stranger things, Breaking Bad, Star Wars keeps coming back
Makeovers, Botox, Glastonbury still rocks,
Pope Francis, Malcolm X, British politics a mess
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
Saudi women travel free, rising sea, jet stream
Shotgun, Bruno Mars, Nasa Rover walked too far
Lizard kings, Palestine, missing sunken airline
Nazanin’s in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
Time’s up, Doomsday clock, parliament is grid-locked
Foreign debts, homeless vets, opioids do not protect
Cambridge analytica, MAGA-lomania
Slogans on a red bus, who the heck can we trust?
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on
