"We Built This City" voted as the worst single ever

News.Com.AU | April 21, 2004 | Patrick O'Neil

[yankeedame]

Dotty ditties with cringe factor

By Patrick O'Neil
April 21, 2004

LOVE or hate them you can't get these stinkers out of your head.

Blender magazine Blender Magazine has rated We Built This City as the worst single ever constructed in its list "The 50 Worst Songs Ever".

The magazine said the Starship song earned the accolade because it inspired "the most virulent feelings of outrage".

To make the list, each pungent ditty had to be a hit.

Entry was based on unintentionally poor songwriting.

Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder's maudlin duet Ebony and Ivory also featured, as did R.E.M's Shiny, Happy People and John Mayer's Your Body is a Wonderland.

But the inclusion most likely to spark calls of blasphemy is the listing of the Simon and Garfunkel ballad The Sounds of Silence.

"It's the poetry meaningfulness that got our goat," said Blender editor Craig Marks. "With self-important lyrics like, 'Hear my words that I might teach you', it's almost a parody of pretentious '60s folk rock."

Few outside the boot-scooting fraternity would contest the listing of the Billy Ray Cyrus atrocity Achy Breaky Heart at No. 2.

Fallen star Vanilla Ice made it in with perennial dance-floor filler Ice Ice Baby, as did good-times theme song Don't Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin.

Eddie Murphy's ill-advised foray into music, with the 1985 tragedy Party All the Time, was evidence actors other than J-Lo should not sing. It ranked No. 8.

Herald Sun

[Preachin']

My all-time least favorite:

"Islands in the Stream"-Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton

[Dog Gone]

Any list that doesn't include Barry Manilow's "Mandy" is fundamentally flawed.

[Cincinatus]

Surely you're joking....

Whenever that song came on, I lunged for the dial so fast the space-time continuum ripped apart.

[Dane]

The magazine said the Starship song earned the accolade because it inspired "the most virulent feelings of outrage"

Some questions.

Why did "Jefferson Airplane" change their name to "Jefferson Starship"?

And when did they know it?

[wardaddy]

How dare you bash 1910 Fruitgum Company?

Next you'll be bashing The Archies...you blasphemer!

Sugar Sugar....da da da da dadum....Ah Honey...

boy to be 10 again...

;>)

[axel f]

Disco, disco duck
Disco, disco duck
Try your luck
Don't be a cluck!

[N. Theknow]

We didn't Start the Fire - Billy Joel?

Born in the USA - Springsteen

These get my vote.

[Made In The USA]

Number one should be EVERYTHING from the folksy band "America".

It makes me ill thinking about the songs and their lyrics.

[BibChr]

No no no, "We Built This City" is an OK song.

"Ebony" is really bad. But there are others:

"Someone's Knockin' On M'Door" (Wings)
"Once...Twice...Three Times a Lady" (Commodores)
"Fire" (what's her name?)
"You're Love Is Lifting Me Higher" (same?)
"Don't Go Breakin' My Heart" (Elton John etc.)
"Crocodile Rock" (ditto)

I could go on and on.

Dan

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

MacArthur Park Yummy Yummy Yummy You're Having My Baby

That actually works better as a three-part song, rather than three individual songs.

[Darnright]

>What, no mention of 'Macarthur Park'?

MacArthur Park has to be the WORST song ever. Then again, that awful thing, "You're Having My Baby" - gag a maggot.

[Made In The USA]

John Kerry actually voted for that one before he voted against it.

(Was I the first to use that one today?)

[Cagey]

My favorite Worst Single ever....................

Surfing Bird

Well everybody's heard about the bird
Bird bird bird Bird is the word
Don't you know about this bird Well everybody knows that bird is a word
Bird bird bird bird is a word

[drjimmy]

I'll also have to give a close second to Joan Baez' "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." That one just makes me cringe, especially when she sings about "a couple of light-years ago".
You're mixing "Dixie" up with "Diamonds and Rust," her song about Dylan.

[Xenalyte]

I can't believe no one has mentioned "Dreams of the Everyday Housewife." UGH!

Or how about "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"?

[dfwgator]

How "Betty Davis Eyes" didn't get worst single is beyond me.

[novalogic]

Worst Most Self-important Magazine Ever:

Blender magazine

[South40]

"I am woman, hear me roar..."

How can you top that?

[familyofman]

With no rap or hip hop trash on the list - I think it's entirely bogus!!! Of course any song on the list had to be a hit. Allrap & hip hop trash should be on the top of the list - repetitive beat and lyrics to offend everyone. Rap/hip hop has also encouraged misguided youth into putting big bass speakers in their cars, cranking it up so you can hear - Whumpa whumpa whumpa - for miles. That is an outrage of historic proportion.

[wardaddy]

I was too young to distinguish progressive rock or good r&b from tripe......born in 57.

That song and Conquistador by Procol Harum always reminded me of each other....overly dramatized vocals I guess.

About 1969-70, I discovered different rock where the DJs sounded like regular (stoned) people with overly nasal voices and the rest is history.

Before that I was an AM transistor radio top 40 grade schooler and music was everything from decent stuff like Beatles and Stones and Motown to what we would know call garbage.