Storm Front

Storm Front is the eleventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Billy Joel, released on October 17, 1989. It was Joel’s third album to reach No. 1 in the U.S. The album was also nominated for five Grammy Awards. “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is a fast-paced song, with lyrics including brief, rapid-fire allusions to more than 100 headline events between 1949, the year of Joel’s birth, and 1989. The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year.

Steven Ettinger wrote about the song:

Billy Joel captured the major images, events, and personalities of this half-century in a three-minute song…. It was pure information overload, a song that assumed we knew exactly what he was singing about…What was truly alarming was the realization that we, the listeners, for the most part understood the references

“The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” is performed in the key of A Minor, sung in the persona of an impoverished fisherman off Long Island. The lyrics reference locations in the Outer Lands such as Block Island Sound, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Montauk, and Gardiners Bay. “I Go to Extremes” was originally written as an apology to Joel’s wife at the time, Christie Brinkley. “Leningrad” is about a Russian clown named Viktor Razinov, whom he met while touring the Soviet Union in 1987. Throughout the song, major items of Viktor’s and Billy’s lives are compared to show the cultural differences and similarities of the United States of America and the Soviet Union.

The album’s cover depicts the maritime storm warning flag indicating wind forces 10–12, the highest intensity on the Beaufort scale.