There are now only three living people in Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire' after Brigitte Bardot's death
The iconic song is a who's who of 1949 to 1989
Only three people name-dropped in Billy Joel's famous track 'We Didn't Start the Fire' are still alive after the death of Brigitte Bardot.
On 28 December, it was revealed that the French model, singer and actor had died at the age of 91 at her home in Saint-Tropez.
Often referred to by her initials, BB, Bardot is widely considered to be one of the most famous French celebrities of the mid-20th Century, with her role in 1956 film And God Created Woman being symbolic of the sexual revolution during the 50s and 60s.
She would become a controversial figure later in life, with her far-right political beliefs and inflammatory comments seeing her fined numerous times for inciting racial hatred.
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Bardot was also one of the many people - both famous and infamous - name-dropped in Joel's iconic song 'We Didn't Start the Fire'. Her death sees the number of living figures mentioned in it dwindle to three.
How many people are named in Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire'?
A grand total of 59 celebrities, politicians and prominent figures are mentioned in the 1989 song, all of whom Joel deemed influential to the mid-century.
The list includes:
Entertainment: Doris Day, Johnnie Ray, Joe DiMaggio, Liberace, Marilyn Monroe, Buddy Holly, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Elvis Presley and Chubby Checker.
Authors: Jack Kerouac, Boris Pasternak and Ernest Hemingway.
Politicians: Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Joe McCarthy, Dwight Eisenhower, Joseph Stalin, Georgy Malenkov, Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser, John F. Kennedy, Winthrop Rockefeller, ex-President of Argentina Juan Peron, Ho Chi Minh, Nikita Khrushchev, Ronald Reagan, Ruhollah Khomeini, John Glenn and former French President Charles de Gaulle.
Royalty: Queen Elizabeth II, Grace Kelly, and Princess of Monaco.
Sport: Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano, and Roy Campanella.
Other: There's also Albert Einstein, mafioso Vito Genovese, Pope Paul VI, revolutionary Fidel Castro, and activist Malcolm X, as well as some pretty unsavoury characters such as murderer Charles Starkweather, Nazi Adolf Eichmann and subway shooter Bernie Goetz.
Of the mega name drop only three people are alive as of 31 December 2025 (per Reddit). These are: Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker and Goetz, a man who shot and injured four black teenagers on a New York subway in 1984.
What is 'We Didn't Start the Fire' about?
As well as reeling off several names, Joel also references several key events in the 20th century, such as Beatlemania, the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square protests, making it an absolutely jam-packed retelling of cultural history between 1949 and 1989.
So how did the singer come up with such an idea?
According to the 'Piano Man' singer, it came to him after a conversation with a friend of John Lennon's son, Sean Lennon.
"I’d turned 40 years old. It was around my birthday. I was in the studio. I was trying to think of ideas for songs, and I met a guy who had just turned 21," Joel explained during a 1994 talk at the Oxford Union.
Joel explained how the man told him it was 'a terrible time to be 21' to which he replied: 'Yeah, I remember when I turned 21 I thought it was an awful time. We had Vietnam, and you know, there was drug problems and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful.'
The friend then claimed 'nothing happened in the ’50s' prompting Joel to begin listing off things which happened in his youth.
"So, I thought 'Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ever heard of the Korean War? Suez Canal crisis, you know?'" he explained.
"So, I started writing these things out, almost like an exercise, and I started getting this idea for a song."
Topics: Music
Brenna Cooper