Posted on 04/26/2021 4:50:28 AM PDT by mylife
Everybody says they hate “We Built This City.”
But… everybody doesn’t — even if it really seems like they do.
In 2004, Blender magazine and VH1 ganged up on “We Built This City” and placed it at No. 1 on their list of The 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs...Ever. In 2011, Rolling Stone’s readers named the Starship tune the worst song of the ’80s, and did so by a huge margin. GQ called it “the most detested song in human history.” In The New York Times, Stephen Holden called the album that spawned the song, Knee Deep in the Hoopla, “A compendium of strutting pop-rock clichés” and that it “represents the '80s equivalent of almost everything the original Jefferson Airplane stood against — conformity, conservatism, and a slavish adherence to formula.”
Even many of the people who wrote it and sung it have thrown the song under the bus. Singer Grace Slick referred to "We Built This City" as “the worst song ever” during a 2012 conversation with Vanity Fair.
Starship - We Built This City (Official Music Video) Subscribe to Ultimate Classic Rock on
But I love “We Built This City.” And deep down, a lot of other people love “We Built This City” as well.
In 1985, Jefferson Starship crashed and took off again as Starship with singers Slick and Mickey Thomas, guitarist Craig Chaquico, bassist Pete Sears and drummer Donny Baldwin. What started with Slick writing and singing “White Rabbit” in Jefferson Airplane - shouting “And you've just had some kind of mushroom/And your mind is moving low” and screaming “Feed your head!” over gloriously trippy and relentless-driving music - had become something very different in ’85.
(Excerpt) Read more at ultimateclassicrock.com ...
Yes, such a talented man whose only hit outside the jazz world was such an atrocious song.
Don Was is a talented man, but the Dinosaur song is an atrocious pile of merde.
Ebony and Ivory is definitely on my list of cringeworthy bad songs. “The Doggone Girl is Mine” also.
My favorite line in that song is “The police have got the choke hold”.
Muskrat Love?
Ha ha.
Double Dutch Bus.
Pac Man Fever.
Better thread lightly, partner. Or I’ll Stop Believing.
ahhh, I see what you did there!
If not for one fantastic song: "Back on the Road Again". I don't believe most people know that was theirs.
PigRigger, I once single-handedly defeated an entire biker gang and didn't get a scratch. At my favorite bar the tender looked out the window and said "Oh no. Last time they were here they broke everything." Fifteen bikers were pulling in who weren't the nice veteran kind. I went over to the jukebox and put in the following:
"Africa" by Toto
"Forever in Blue Jeans" by Neil Diamond
"(Me and You and) A Dog Named Boo" by Lobo
"There's a Kind of Hush" by the Carpenters, and
"Shannon" by Henry Gross.
They were out of there before I had to whip out "Billy Don't Be a Hero". Mikel drank free for quite a while.
Every one of those are on my list as well. You must have been a metal head like me.
Was it at Red Rocks outside of Denver (88/89ish)?
I never understood Neal Schon in that band. Neal was a much better guitarist then Journey deserved.
san diego
:)
I always liked this song. My only beef with it was the way they pandered by changing the city locations in the lyrics depending on what city the radio station playing the song was in.
I saw Jethro Tull in successive years - 2006 and 2007 - and while Ian Anderson was still great on the flute I would say his voice was shot.
Oh yeah Styx is in my bottom five too. Domo Arigato Mr Roboto?1 WTF?
Chaquico is a virtuoso; Starship never put his talent to good use.
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