"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

[eddie willers]

Actually I thought pre-Yellow Brick Road Elton John was pretty good, especially Madman Across the Water and Tumbleweed Connection. But once he let his more flamboyant side come out, that was that.

You are correct and have placed when he "Jumped The Shark" exactly right with Yellow Brick Road (Though parts of Honky Chateau started the slide)

Tumbleweed Connection is a Desert Island Disc.

[Mrs Zip]

ping

[RightOnline]

No accountin' for some people's taste, I guess.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Yes, isn't THAT the truth? ;-)

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Nah, I think it's because most of the great unwashed (in the musical sense) can't tell the difference between a 3 chord song and one that is more interesting, harmonically-speaking. To steal the typical comments from American Bandstand, "Hey, it's got a good beat - I give it an 85." I think that about sums up "Louie, Louie".

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

LOL!!!!!!!!

[CobaltBlue]

But Robbie Robertson singing "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is one of the high points of the 20th century, maybe even the entire second millinium.

[zip]

I don't remember (if I ever knew it) the title but it had some young stud chasing his girlfriend in his pickup but wrecked it then broke his fist hitting a telephone post and people telling him forget her because "she was crazy" for leaving him. What a jewel!

Anyone help me out with the title??

[wingster]

"Love Shack" by the B-52s. That band was long dead before that late in their careers revived them to go on to torment me for years.

[Mr. Mojo]

No accountin' for some people's taste, I guess.

Agreed. There are actually some guitarists out there who don't appreciate blues masters like Albert King, Duane Allman, Mike Bloomfield, Buddy Guy, and Otis Rush. .....But to each his own.

[RightOnline]

.......many of whom are grossly overrated. Except Duane Allman, of course.

[djf]

"It's a wild tyme, I see people all around me changing faces,
It's a wild tyme, I'm doing things that haven't got a name yet..."



Sittin here listenin on my Polk SDA-SRS's
Jorma is God!