Weird Al Vs. Billy Joel.

For some reason I was thinking about the amazing song by Weird Al Yankovic: Dare 2b stupid.I actually know the reason. His name came up in a conversation and I mentioned that my friend's band WE MARCH (www.myspace.com/wemarch ) does a crazy cover of the aforementioned masterpiece. (they manage somehow to make it sound like Motorhead's eponymous song, if you can believe that). This lead me to start thinking about all the cultural references and cliches used to make up the lyrics in this song. It's mostly cliches but I think it's cultural references bear more significance on my personal being than a similar song: "We Didn't Start The Fire" by Billy Joel. I remember most of the lyrics to D2bs but I'll be damned if I didn't have to google WDSTF. The only lyric I could think of was "Space monkey mafia.." Which would be a sweet band name if it wasn't a Billy Joel reference. Upon goggling, I discovered that there were pages that specifically used the song as an educational tool! (http://www.teacheroz.com/fire.htm)Why is this?!
I think the main reason is that most teachers are lazy, but also because they're Subaru Forester driving Liberals who grew up with the song and trust that Billy would not lead them astray with his comprehensive run-down of the 20Th century. I call bullshit! I think it unfair to squeeze a bunch of historical and cultural references into a 5 min. song. This smacks of revisionist history and as everybody knows, revisionist history is the stuff of American educators, Nazis and apparently Billy Joel. It's true! If you need proof, the title of the album on which WDSTF appears is "Storm Front", also the name of a white supremacy group.(http://www.stormfront.org/)
That link gets four hits on google before you see even one hit for the BJ album. That should be enough for anyone to surmise that D2bs is a superior song. If not let's compare both songs on a strictly sonic/visual basis:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKu2QaytmrM I know it was excruciating the first time you watched this 20 years ago but bear with me. Besides the bloated, sterile rock production and inflated video budget for this song it just sounds AWFUL and has not one iota of the kind of timeless quality Dare 2 b stupid has: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nll8-kSlq6c

See what i mean? I'm sure Mr. Yankovic had no idea the kind of significance this song would have when he wrote it, I mean, it's obviously a stab at DEVO and their sound, (lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh was once quoted as saying he found himself to be angry and jealous of the sound Al got in the song, wishing he could have captured it himself and being pissed off about
The Prince of Parody making fun of his band, which if you think about it is a compliment: you haven't arrived until Weird Al makes fun of you) but when you compare the two videos you see that the real differences lie in the intentions. It seems to me, your humble narrator, that Mr. Joel's intentions were somewhat toward the educational while Weird was just having fun. Billy encourages you to enjoy history, while Al dares u 2 b stupid. Joel fails while Yankovic succeeds in achieving the opposite. Joel references a multitude of bygone stars of the big screen while Al is the only one to use an actual big name star in his video (the unforgettable Craig T. Nelson of POLTERGEIST and COACH fame). Even though it seems like Al is being whimsical and funny
I'd say he's really lambasting the junk culture of America, while Billy seems to be championing it.

Evidence of this can be found in "The Transformers Movie" in the scene where Al voices a "Junkion" transformer, lending credence to my statement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKqboQV_lfg
see there? further evidence, proof positive! that Dare 2b stupid is more culturally significant than We Didn't Start The Fire. I'm sure the Nazis and teachers of Amerikkka would say otherwise but I have a question for them: Did Billy Joel have a song in the fucking Transformers movie? Did Mr. Joel ever make Mark Mothersbaugh jealous with his sound? I thought not, Rommel.