#915. Lineage of Song “We Didn’t Start the Fire”

Billy Joel

Fall Out Boy

My head cannon says we eventually got “Turn the Lights Back On” because the Fall Out Boy follow-up to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” happened.

Billy Joel was an icon from the ‘70s to the ‘90s, an incredible run of music some of us consider on par with what the Beatles collectively produced in the ‘60s. When he started dabbling in classical music, it seemed he’d found a new purpose in life, and he released an album of original compositions, but then realized the classical world didn’t clamor for him the way the pop world did, and he went radio silent except for regular touring (plus a song here or two) for decades.

Broadway did one of its compilation musicals around his work. Billy Joel always resisted writing an autobiography or memoir, even though he led a fascinating and very public life, where he was actually a boxer and member of a band before he broke out as a solo artist, and just the actual “piano man” origins chronicled in the song that helped define him.

“We Didn’t Start the Fire” was a song that went beyond what pop music usually encompasses. It’s a list of defining moments and personalities drawn from his lifetime to that point, and runs contrary to the usual pessimistic view that history always seems to trend in a negative direction. I remember it being featured in one of my classes in middle school as a teaching tool. 

After he walked away in 1994, people had weird takes on his legacy, saying the deliberate walkout “so early” diminished his legacy. Most artists would kill for just a handful of what Billy Joel accomplished in song. He put together a mainstream run that’s virtually unparalleled, unbroken from his breakthrough to River of Dreams.

And eventually someone paid tribute to him and helped continue that legacy. This just doesn’t happen, folks. (Ace of Base did an obscure sequel to Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia,” though. It’s part of their criminally underrated Cruel Summer album. Very close but not quite.)

And then we got Billy Joel’s “Turn the Lights Back On,” his contribution to the late career statement song so many artists since Johnny Cash dropped “Hurt” have pursued. The song is great, the video is phenomenal.

#914. Lineage of Song: “Man of Constant Sorrow”

As performed in O Brother Where Art Thou?

Alison Krause & Union Station

Home Free

This one’s a little tongue-in-cheek, since of the two versions from 2000, the same person’s singing.

In the (what I consider) classic film O Brother, Where Art Thou? George Clooney leads an inept trio of runaways from a chain gang, which at one point pretends to be recording artists called the Soggy Bottom Boys. 

Now, despite being the nephew of Rosemary Clooney (White Christmas), George didn’t sing on the soundtrack, so when his character leads “Man of Constant Sorrow,” that’s Dan Tyminsky you’re hearing, and that’s Tyminsky with Alison Krause in the second video. The soundtrack was by far a bigger success story than the movie itself, leading to a renaissance for Americana music that also led to a brief revival of interest of folk music later that was another reason rock lost favor with critics and/or fans.

Eventually “Man of Constant Sorrow” gained enough traction to carry cover versions from the likes of Home Free. Despite being more than a century old today, it wasn’t until Tyminsky covered it in 2000 that it reemerged into the popular consciousness.

But as with many things, we can circle the conversation back to Bob Dylan:

Here’s the Stanley Brothers before him:

Here’s Joan Baez singing “Girl of Constant Sorrow”:

Going way back here’s Emry Arthur:

#913. Lineage of Song: “Bully Boys”

As sung in Robin Hood

Alan Doyle performs it live

Colm McGuinness

Random folk version

I’ve blogged about this phenomenon before, but it still fascinates me and has actually gotten bigger since then…

This time I’ll go a little deeper. Let’s rewind to Russell Crowe in the ‘80s, when you had to be Australian to know he existed. At this point he really was making his name as a pop act. The song most relevant to later eras would be “I Just Wanna Be Like Marlon Brando.” Eventually he did in fact become an acting icon.

But he never left his interest in music behind. He ended up making friends with Alan Doyle of the Newfoundland folk band Great Big Sea, and they made music together and Doyle showed up in a number of Crowe’s movies. (Their biggest musical collaboration would be “Testify,” a song so good I still swear it can’t possibly originate with them or is a testament to just how good Crowe really is.) Doyle’s biggest role was as Alan-a-Dale in Robin Hood. When you cast an authentic musician in the role who regularly performs folk music and composes original material, the likelihood of something great resulting increases. He cobbled together a tune that’s half in the background of one scene, forgot about it, and a few years later was made aware that folk acts had claimed it and made it their own, finishing it out however they felt like, and the music scene began crediting it as another folk traditional from some point long in the past, original composer “unknown.”

So he finished it out himself and released it on an album. In recent years, after acts like Mumford & Sons made it briefly seem folk music would explode again in all the ways fans still lament Bob Dylan abandoning in Newport, there’s once again been a resurgence. Nathan Evans went viral with “Wellerman,” a traditional sea shanty, and on the album he subsequently got to make he included a cover of Doyle’s “Bully Boys.” Colm McGuinness has a video where he accompanies himself brilliantly, and that’s become a favorite of mine…

It’s strange how these things turn out. When I started this series I didn’t immediately think to include “Bully Boys,” since I’d covered it before (heh), but it would be woefully incomplete without it. Anyone can look up traditional songs that trace back centuries. This is one that played out over very recent history in the most unlikely ways. It will probably never top any charts, but has woven its way deeply across the English speaking landscape (and for all I know, elsewhere). This is the kind of thing that fascinates me.

#912. Lineage of Song “The Weary Kind”

Colin Farrell

Jeff Bridges

Ryan Bingham 

This one's a departure from what I've been talking about, since all three versions of "The Weary Kind" included above were done at the same time, for the same reason, a film called Crazy Heart. 

It's just interesting, to me, that even that's possible, that we so seldom think of how radically different a song can sound if a different person is singing, not merely in a rearrangement but in the vocals themselves.  Jeff Bridges sounds completely different than Colin Farrell, Bridges playing the cagey veteran who gifts Farrell the song, which in the real world was composed by Ryan Bingham, who later became a little better known for a supporting role in Yellowstone, where he sometimes sings, too (his introduction merrily jokes about how depressing his music sounds).

And I've loved the song, regardless of who sings it, since I first saw the film.  I was reminded recently of how canned music written for movies has become in recent years, but "The Weary Kind" is a considerable exception.  Much of what Bridges sings to represent a legendary career is a little on the nose (written sometimes to comment on the state in which we find him rather than to reflect on a heyday).  "Weary Kind" is a song that eclipses this fictional output and sounds like it could easily have landed on the radio in real life.  Maybe it did?  I don't know.