A new cover of Billy Joel’s 1989 hit song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” has received mixed reviews, to say the least.

Fall Out Boy, a band with multiple hit singles, released an updated version of Joel’s song featuring references to prominent people and events from the past 34 years.

The new version sparked a variety of criticisms, including the band’s decision to rhyme “George Floyd” with “Metroid.”

For those who do not recall, Joel’s original song amounted to a mishmash of rhymed historical references set to an upbeat theme that invaded a listener’s head and remained there for days.

The catchy song’s lyrics, which blend the political and the cultural, sent younger listeners scrambling for encyclopedias.

A few of the lines went as followed:

Harry Truman, Doris Day,

Red China, Johnny Ray

South Pacific

Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio.

Fall Out Boy’s updated version followed the same pattern. The George-Floyd-Metroid line reads:

Meghan Markle, George Floyd

Burj Khalifa, Metroid.

The choice left some people unimpressed.

On Twitter, one user tweeted: “Fall out boy racking their brains for 40 seconds trying to figure out what rhymes with George Floyd before finally settling on Metroid.”

Another user, who identifies himself as a “washed up game developer,” tweeted: “what do you mean ‘fall out boy released a new version of We Didnt Start the Fire where they rhyme ‘George Floyd’ with ‘Metroid” what am i supposed to do with that.”

Slate took issue with the inclusion of “Metroid” for any reason: “Why is Metroid in there? Metroid was released in 1986!”

Morgan Hines, oddly enough a USA Today food reporter, noted that “there have been plenty of iterations” of Metroid since 1986 “so we’ll cut the band some slack.”

On the whole, the Floyd-Metroid rhyme-pairing kerfuffle seems to revolve around the inclusion of something lazy, frivolous and date-inappropriate.

Floyd’s appearance in the song might rankle some readers who still feel enraged by the riots, the moral posturing and the veneration of a career criminal that marred the already miserable summer of 2020.

In fairness, Fall Out Boy’s mention of Floyd amounts to no more of a political endorsement than Joel’s reference to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the song’s original version.

The new song, however, takes chronological liberties bound to annoy any grumpy, middle-aged writer.

Joel’s original version followed historical chronology, from the mid-40s to the late-80s.

Fall Out Boy’s new version, on the other hand, opens by rhyming “Arab Spring” (2011) with “Rodney King” (1991).

Surely there is a lesson there about declining historical consciousness or at least about “kids these days.”

Either way, get off my lawn.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.