Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire' inspires two new projects

Following its use last summer in the Amazon Prime Video series "The Boys," Billy Joel's classic song "We Didn't Start the Fire" is now featured in two new online projects.

The first, a roughly 4-minute music video titled "The History of Scotch Whisky," from the website Whisky and Wisdom, repurposes the tune of the Hicksville-raised Joel's 1989 No. 1 hit with lighthearted lyrics, using still news and historical images to trace Scotch from its disputed origins to the present day.

Meanwhile, a new podcast out of England discusses world history from 1949, based on the song. Each episode of "We Didn't Start the Fire" uses a term from the name-checking lyrics as a springboard to discuss how the subject helped shape global events. "It's the story of the postwar world," co-host Tom Fordyce explains on the premiere. "History, culture, politics, economics — it's all in there." Joel himself is not involved.

An expert on each topic joins Fordyce and fellow co-host Katie Puckrik weekly. In the 33-minute premiere, "Harry Truman," the guest is Nick Witham, associate professor of U.S. History at University College London's /Institute of the Americas. Guests will include both academics and pop-culture commentators, states the show's homepage.

Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Joel, 71, who has homes in Sag Harbor and Centre Island, told an Oxford University audience in 1994 that he had written the song in a recording studio where Sean Lennon, son of The Beatles' John Lennon, also was, with a friend who had just turned 21.

"I said, 'Yeah, I remember when I turned 21, I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam and drug problems, Civil Rights problems and everything seemed to be awful.' And he [Sean Lennon's friend] said, 'Yeah, but it was different for you because you were a kid in the '50s, and everybody knows that nothing happened in the '50s.' So I thought, wait a minute — didn't you ever hear of the Korean War, the Suez Canal crisis? And I started to write these things out almost like an exercise, and I started getting this idea for a song."

The podcasters say they hope to get Joel's blessing. "I'm wondering," says Puckrik on the premiere, "if we can leave a little trail of breadcrumbs to entice the songwriter himself to possibly chat [with] us."