Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Jordan Stokes to overthink the decade at its close, addressing the defects of memory and nostalgia while recapping trends in music, television, and movies.
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Download Episode 78 (MP3)
Today’s guest post is an analysis of Billy Joel from Chris Morgan. Want to light it? Try to fight it? Let us know in the comments.
We all know the song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” – it’s the Billy Joel song that isn’t “Piano Man” (or “You may be Right” for you Dave’s World fans out there). It’s the song where Mr. Joel sort of talk-sings his way through a bunch of names and things from history. In many ways, it is the spiritual, intelligible forefather to R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as we Know it (And I Feel Fine)” (sing it with me now: Dun duhduh, duhduhduh, Leonard Bernstein!). It also has a bad music video. However, none of that is of particular importance or interest to me. I’m much more interested in what this song says about Billy Joel.
Over the past week, the Overthinking It team has subjected the Back to the Future trilogy to a level of scrutiny it definitely deserves, pointing out a wide variety of paradoxes, inconsistencies, and unanswered questions regarding the series. Because these analyses have focused on the logical, metaphysical, and technological aspects of time-travel within the plot of the three BTTF movies, they haven’t touched on what I consider to be one of the most interesting puzzles in the series:The Huey Paradox.
The Huey Paradox is jointly produced by two features of the BTTF trilogy: the overwhelming number of references to Huey Lewis throughout Back to the Future, along with his near absence in the other two films in the series. Songs by Huey Lewis and the News are the first and last music that you hear in part one of the trilogy: Marty listens to “The Power of Love” as he skateboards to school (and again after getting a kiss from Jennifer under the clock tower), and “Back in Time” plays on his clock radio the morning after he returns from 1955 (and is reprised over the end credits). In addition, Huey Lewis himself makes a brief cameo as one of the high school teachers who deems Marty’s band “too loud” to play at the school dance, cutting off their instrumental noise-metal rendition of “The Power of Love” after about 30 seconds. Huey also reappears briefly as a fedora-wearing man who briefly stares at Marty’s “life preserver” puffy vest in 1950s Hill Valley.
It’s Saturday. Keep your PJs on, grab a bowl of sugary cereal, plop yourself on the floor 9 inches from the TV, and commence mouthbreathing. [via Big Contrarian]