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 ...
I actually saw was not was with robert cray and stevie ray vaughn, it was a great show and I met cray.
My top 5 worst if anyone cares:
Asia - The Final Countdown
Peter Cetera - Glory of Love
Survivor - Eye of the Tiger
Starship - We Built this City (my list is from 10 years ago)
Richard Harris - MacArthur Park
Asia was a sad let down for such a group of talent.
I just called to say I love you. Stevie Wonder’s pop song ugh....
Anything by BeeGees , or my personal vomitorious pick Sweet Caroline
I can’t say it’s my favorite song of Starship from the 80’s—that was Sarah—but it’s not awful.
It’s fun to sing along with it nowadays, as it brings back a happier time and sweet, sad nostalgia.
1985: Ronald Reagan was President, Gorbachev put in charge of USSR, Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior sunk, Mexico City earthquake, new Coke, starving Ethiopians....
I realize all western music is built on a formula of call and response but I loath formula pop
Omg forgot about that damned wet cake song, OMG!
Not just the wrong group, but the wrong continent. It was by Europe.
Asia didn’t do “ The Final Countdown”, that was Europe. Different continent.
Thanks for the correction - went from memory that apparently failed me.
The song still sucks.
We Built This City is just a lame song. There’s no way to spin it.
Is it the worst song ever? No. There are increasingly more and more songs everyday that are worse than this one, but it’s still not good.
MTV killed music, not because of bad videos and formulaic pop, but because it steered the industry toward a different audience and then kept steering into it.
I remember when it came out. I did not care for it, but I can’t see why it is singled out as “most detested”. It’s better than ghetto hip-hop.
I believe the problem with We Build this City that it was played all too often on radio, as in over and over again in the rotation. It’s not a great song. It’s not a terrible song. It was just a worn out song. There are plenty more like it. If they just received appropriate air time, people would not feel so negative. With that said, I can go without listening to it for another decade or two. Just the mention of the song title, has it playing in my head. I will now listen to something else in attempt to turn it off.
From White Rabbit to THAT?!?!?!?!
Or “Bette Davis Eyes”
Starship was actually pretty good before Grace rejoined them. “Jane” is a good song.
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