“We Built This City” (1985) by Starship is one of the best debut smashes EVER!

Is this a sarcastic joke?

It would be really funny if they had actually changed their name like 3 times and had a ton of hits before this.

How timely.

BREAKING!!!

They were a “spinoff” from Jefferson Starship

I remember the first time I heard this song it must have been right after it came out. I was over at my cousin's house and we were playing at her best friends Britne Searles house across the street and she had a small boombox in her room and I it came on the radio. I hated Britney because she was an only child and spoiled at that. a total c***.

I like on their wiki they have 21 past band members.

In 1985 I left our small town for big bad El Lay with my first big crush gay boyfriend. We packed his Mazda pickup with all our worldly goods and headed down Route10 full of the love ,hope and horniness of youth. On the radio this cheesy song was playing all thru our trip. It was the soundtrack of our fucking (literally) great adventure. Heard it in the convivence store the other day and suddenly I was 23yo making out with my Lunkhead under the stars. Started to cry. Funny how music becomes a time machine. Don 't you remember? Yep I do.

“ Funny how music becomes a time machine.”

Can you stop saying this on every thread about music? Yes. It’s a Time Machine. We know.

You must be joking. Starship was the burnt-out dregs of a once-innovative and popular band. At least Marty and Grace hung around for awhile. Their entire seventies catalog was CRAP

R9 Can you stop typing old & bitter. We know you are dear.

An Indian or gen z created thread

Grace Slick disowned this song. You should too, OP!

Weren’t the band members of Jefferson Starship mostly different from those on Starship? It’s not like the entire band were in the latter. It was a complete revamp.

You fucked my tits and you ate my ass!

Jesus Christ it’s awful.

Marty Balin was a lovely man. Miracles is still a sexy sexy song.

Ironic how two of the best singers in rock, Mickey Thomas and Grace Slick, are the singers in one of the worst hits of the rock era. The lyrics are contrived and vacuous and the musicand production are the epitome of 1980s corporate rock.

Fun Fact: Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics to We Built This City.

[quote] Fun Fact: Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics to We Built This City.

And he should die for it!

It was horrible then, it's horrible now.

This however was wonderful then....and still is today:

Starship was a spinoff band from Jefferson Starship who was a spinoff band from Jefferson Airplane. They weren’t all the same.

Did you know Bernie Taupin had a hand in writing this abomination?

OP, does it slap!?

Sorry but I always found it fun. I don’t get the strong hate DL has for this song.

OP, is it a bop?

R11 hate to break it to you, but if you were 23 in 1985 you are now old too.

As if the song wasn't horrible enough, our local Top 40 station replaced the original DJ patter from the song with one of their own DJs doing a local version with their call letters. So cheesy. I'm sure stations all over the country did the same thing.

Marconi plays La Bamba? I fuckeen played La Bamba!

I always wanted to skate my pairs long program to this song at the Olympics! My partner would be Michelle Kwan who would come out of retirement and we would have the audience on its feet!

Are you on crack?

Holy shit. Grace Slick was not a stage name.

It's the worst thing Bernie Taupin has ever done. Worse than Candle in the Wind 1997.

This is in the top 10 of the worst songs I’ve ever heard

Jane was far better, it still rocks

If I hear it once, it’s fucking stuck in my head all day.

Fuck them with a chainsaw.

It is often on "Worst Songs" lists

My worst is John Cougar Mellancamp's Jack and Diane. It's better than that.

No time is a good time for this song or "Sara."

It’s also repetitive as hell.

Not quite as bad as Eddie Murphy’s “Party all the Time.” Jesus, it’s so bad God should take him ASAP.

I love this song - always have.

I loved the 80's but this song reminds me there was a lot of crap pop music back then. r38 you are correct about Sara, another one that is like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Meh.....

Debut? Did this bitch just call this a debut?

We need to turn this into a porn or hitler thread.

Count on Me is a good Jefferson Starship song.

In the 80s, I was still stuck on 70s music, OP.

But I can relate to what you say about the strong feelings of nostalgia that music can evoke.

You all are crazy to not like this.

R24 It's not just DL. Everyone hates this song

Yeah. I’m sure EVERYONE hates it.

Mickey Thomas was one hot little Georgia boy back in the day. Just gorgeous.

R26 I was 23 in 1985, too. Yet somehow, I’m not old. How do you explain that?

It has maybe 12 words in the whole song!

Awful.

classic

I was big into pop music in the 80’s, like most kids my age (14 in 1985) and genuinely liked some absolute garbage music and garbage songs. But this fucking song? Hated it.

From Wikipedia:

[quote]In 2011, a Rolling Stone magazine online readers poll named "We Built This City" the worst song of the 1980s. The song's winning margin was so large that the magazine reported it "could be the biggest blow-out victory in the history of the Rolling Stone Readers Poll".

And according to the linked story, even people who actually worked on the song hate it, including:

[quote][bold]Grace Slick (Starship vocalist; ‘Vanity Fair,’ June 2012):[/bold] I was such an asshole for a while, I was trying to make up for it by being sober, which I was all during the '80s, which is a bizarre decade to be sober in. So I was trying to make it up to the band by being a good girl. Here, we're going to sing this song, “We Built This City on Rock & Roll.” Oh, you're shitting me, that's the worst song ever.

Shit music. Shit

Even as a teen I knew it blew even though I did like "Rock Me Amadeus" ;)

It was a huge song

It makes me wanna dip my knee deep in the hoopla!

I liked Mickey singing 'Fooled Around and Fell in Love' (with a different group)

Yeah honestly Rock Me Amadeus is awesome compared to this shit

R60 has redeemed the thread.

Thanks

Men on Music

Gotta be honest. The Starship songs are bops. But Grace Slick hated being in this version of the band ans basically quit the music business not long after.

We Built This City on Milk and Cheese

What exactly is “the hoopla”?

Hoopla

Marconi plays the mamba 💃🏽 Listen to the radio 📻 Don’t you remember 🤔 We built this city 🌃 We built this city on rock and roll 🎸

A great rocker by a great band.

Loved the album it appeared on.

r46: Heh-heh. Heh heh-heh...

The lyrics are inane and come across as painfully silly if you are a person who listens for meaning. Many people don't with pop music. And if you don't, this song is fucking amazing. It sounds totally unlike anything that came before it. And Grace Slick's voice fits the electric instruments/synthesizers perfectly.

Supposedly Grace Slick and Mickey treated this album like gig work. They signed a contract, the record company picked the songs and producers, and they showed up and did what they were told. HEART had a similar experience at the exact same time--legacy band signing new contract, doing what they were told and taking leap into 1980's arena rock.

We built this city We built this city on rock and roll Built this city We built this city on rock and roll Say you don't know me or recognize my face Say you don't care who goes to that kind of place Knee deep in the hoopla, sinking in your fight Too many runaways eating up the night Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember? We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll Someone's always playing corporation games Who cares, they're always changing corporation names We just want to dance here, someone stole the stage They call us irresponsible, write us off the page Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember? We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll It's just another Sunday in a tired old street Police have got the choke hold, oh, then we just lost the beat Who counts the money underneath the bar? Who rides the wrecking ball into our guitars? Don't tell us you need us 'cause we're the ship of fools Looking for America, coming through your schools Don't you remember? (Remember) Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember? We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll We built, we built this city, yeah (Built this city) We built, we built this city We built, we built this city yeah (Built this city) We built, we built this city We built, we built this city yeah (Built this city) We built, we built this city (Built this city)

The lyrics don’t seem to make any sense. What the hell are they even talking about?

OP, are you Jabba?

[quote] What the hell are they even talking about?

It's a deeply meditative study of grief and dying.

We built thiszh schitty...

Dionne’s cover of this song was classic camp.

Even Bernie Taupin (wrote it) accepts that it's trash.

Taupin's lyrics are overrated.

"Saturday Saturday Saturday" times 50.

Still I'd like to hear Elton John's take on this tune.

It'd be better than ""Club At The End Of The Street".

R72 the lyrics are a metaphor

Well it was a massive #1 hit and Grammy nominated song.

[quote] Grace Slick disowned this song.

Did she also disown her solo work from the 1980s?

Ms. Dionne certainly has a lot to answer for when she stops being knee deep in the hoopla.

The video from OP has over 118 million views now on YT so someone must like it.

[quote] The lyrics are inane and come across as painfully silly if you are a person who listens for meaning. Many people don't with pop music. And if you don't, this song is fucking amazing

Also, see Africa by Toto.

I too, was 23 in 1985 and am from SF. Was driving across the Golden Gate Bridge into The City when I first heard it. Hadn't heard Grace Slick's voice since she was in Jefferson Airplane (a SF band). The radio DJ's voice was very familiar. Can't remember the station. I assumed that the song was about gentrification and the DiFi-led highrise building boom in the Financial District, and the displacement of artsy types in residential neighborhoods like The Haight-Ashbury. The lyrics were insipid and non-sensical, but it was a catchy tune at the time and seemed so rebellious and important to a 23-year old facing rising rent and living in The Haight, which was sort of "built on rock and roll" (and homosexuality!). I was likely projecting my own situation into the lyrics.

80's music is

RUBBISH 😣

I hope to God OP is joking.

I just noticed that the skyscraper panorama shown in the video features Atlantic City's Clairidge Hotel and Sands Hotel. Odd.

Was Atlantic City built on rock and roll?

I was tickled to death to hear that oft-weeping conservative pundit Glenn Beck hated this song above all others. :D

Midwestern men chose Rowdy Roddy Piper while women chose Stevie Nicks - and they all partied to this song.

Margarita wine coolers were a thing when this came out.

R34

Agreed - Jane has a fantastic piano opening then BAM. Terrific song.

Marty Balin had a great voice.

The song Jane was from the Jefferson Starship 1980 era, about 5 years earlier. They hadn't gone full corporate rock yet.

This song is usually at the top of “most hated song” lists. Along with that song by Concrete Blonde.

What to me makes this songbgreat is that no matter how you feel about it it seems to elicit a strong response. Even though my first memory of it is a stupid Britney's house and her stupid face I love this song and I'll still blast it sometimes in my living room and sing my heart out because it's just stupid fun.

Also I think the song is just something that needed to exist. In some odd way it seems to encapsulate so much of what the '80s were.

Jefferson Starshit built my outhouse.

Most folks born in '66 or earlier hate this song & complain about the lyrics.

They forget some of their great lyrical contributions to The Great Halls Of Music such as Puff The Magic Dragon, The Purple People Eater & "I Am The Witch Doctor (Walla Walla Bang Bang)".

OP has notoriously atrocious taste.

Apparently, every time she hears a fucking song on Sirius XM or some sad little local station, she waddles to her desk, and taps out a post with her hooves about how fantastic some shitty song is to her.

"Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" came out 2 years later, in 1987. It was written by hitmaker Diane Warren and a guy named Albert Hammond.

NGSTUN was another horrible song by Starship and was featured in "Mannequin," a movie.

Yeah, I hope you're being sarcastic. That song epitomized everything bad about the 80's.

It was co-written by Martin Page, who's best known for his hit song "In The House of Stone and Light" and as the singer of the 80s Q-Feel song "Dancing In Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)" Martin and Bernie Taupin were also the writers of Heart's "These Dreams."

These Dreams was an awful song, too. Yet, it was a commercial turning point for Heart.

^The hell you say! These Dreams is amazing!

These Dreams is a solid song, although the 80s production on it ages it terribly.

But it's the best of Heart's zigzag into terrible commercial treacle.

Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now is a great song.

This song provided hours of entertainment to me as a teenager in the 90s. Me and my best friend loved watching 80s videos and this one was a favourite. We just couldn’t believe anybody would earnestly record it or listen to it. Another funny one was Safety Dance. I can understand and appreciate 40s music better than a lot of 80s music. It seems like it was a wild time to be a young adult.

I don't blame Grace Slick one bit for doing the schlocky 80s Starship songs. She was in her forties and knew that her time of the pop charts should've already ended but she could still get airplay on Top 40. She wanted to make the most of the window of time she had left and make enough money to retire and that's exactly what she did. Paul Kantner and Marty Balin were still dragging their old tired asses on stage when they were old men because they needed the $$$. Grace made bank on the Starship songs, retired from the music biz around 1990 and is now in her eighties and has been living a very comfortable retirement in Malibu ever since. Smart woman.

I loved Safety Dance.

I don't blame the band per se for the mostly contrived songs on that album, Knee Deep in the Hoopla. It was just another way to make money by going along with the emerging trend of corporate rock. The album was a big hit and they had two number one singles; We Built This City, and Sara. At least Sara was a half-way decent song and Mickey Thomas lead vocals make it a good recording. We Built This City however has no redeeming value. Crappy overproduced music and silly vacuous lyrics. Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics as part of a song writing team, but they are still among his worst. He has a career of good to great lyrics, but this one is very much from the bottom of the barrel. If it were a minor hit nobody would have cared. But this song was ubiquitous at the time and gave the band the look of having sold out from their Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship days of making music of value.

I used to change the words to "I killed this city on cock and hole".

Marlene Dietrich should have covered this...