I wrote a much longer post the last time I pulled a lyric from “We Didn’t Start the Fire” which does a much better job of telling the story of why this song will forever be stuck with me.

A fun thing I’ve noticed is that if you use the opening lyric of a song, or the song’s main hook, there’s a pretty good success rate of people knowing what it is.

If you grab a bit from the middle of the song, without the lead-in or lead-out, and especially without the melody or rhythm, it’s much harder for people to work out the reference. Movie and TV show quotes are often much more successful, even out of context.