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 ...
Forget it, he's rolling!
Complete commercial garbage. Embarassing.
It’s a bouncy tune that they played over and over again on the radio until everybody was sick of the song. Plus, the actual concept of building a city on rock and roll comes across as smug and offensive and self-glorifying and just silly and wrong. But because it’s such a bouncy, driving tune with such an energetic performance, it’s hard to get out of one’s head.
We Built This City is not a bad song in any way shape or form. It’s fun. Music is allowed to be fun. It takes nothing away from anything else Jefferson Airplane ever did.
Drop a quarter in the jukebox and play it. Everyone at the bar will be singing like they’re on stage.
That song has a lot of competition:
“Having my Baby”
“Don’t Worry, Be Happy”
“Ebony and Ivory”
My local radio station had a marathon of these songs - I had to turn it off it was so bad..
Hey, it was the 80s.... Jefferson Airplane - Jefferson Starship - Starship..... they had to adapt to the times. I find it a pleasing song, not great but certainly not the worst. That would be anything by REO Speedwagon.
I think a lot the backlash against the song was from the aging hippies who thought Grace and Company sold out. If it was just some one-hit wonder, then it would have been long forgotten, like Mr. Mister.
“Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” is worse than we built this city.
Jefferson Starship and Starship should have never been bands anyway.
Just continue on as Airplane or retire.
Boning up on “Animal House” trivia I found that Robert Cray was the bass player in the band “Otis Day And The Knights.” He even put the band together for the movie.
Without a doubt the worst ever. And that guy wrote My Way?
“Don’t Worry, Be Happy”
I liked it. Still do.
“Ebony and Ivory”
When I first heard this I said what are Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson doing a duet together? My buddy replied 'making money!'
You are black and I am white
You are blind as a bat, and I have sight
Wherever we go, you're my amigo
Negro, let's not fiiiiiiiight!
Agreed. I can remember in my early teens liking Top 40 in years like 1981, 82, 83, and even for most of ‘84 but by that time (and certainly 1985) it began to suck in a number of instances and MTV was likely that good part of reason for that.
Oh, and I'll see your Ebony and Ivory and raise you "Say Say Say" and "The Girl is Mine"
really? awesome.
I was waiting for the REO dig *puke* styx too
I’ll nominate “Achy Breaky Heart” for the 1990s. Country music was doing fine with Randy Travis and George Strait and John Anderson and Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs and others of the new traditionalist group and I also liked Highway 101 and the Desert Rose Band with the California influenced country sounds. But the Billy Ray garbage and a lot of Garth Brooks’ music made country go downhill big time (along with Keith Whitley’s sad and untimely passing).
Got a trump for those:
“Hotel California”
What started with Slick writing and singing “White Rabbit” in Jefferson Airplane...
Apologies if this has already been pointed out, but *at best*, Grace *co-wrote* "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love", and not with Starship (or Jefferson Airplane, which was the band that re-recorded it) -- Darby Slick was the primary writer, and it happened when they were together in the band The Great Society.
But yes, "We Built This City" sucks.
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