I don’t know anything about the history or values of Jefferson/[no word] Airplane/Starship and wouldn’t care if I did. We Built This City got regular airplay throughout nearly my entire childhood, and the truth quickly danwed on me…damn, this song is stuuuuupid. It sounds like a collaborative effort of Bill O’Reilly and Homsar.
I mean, seriously, the hell? Marconi playing the mambo? Something surging through the guitars into unspecified schools? Corporate name changes making corporate machinations irrelevant? And could someone PLEASE explain to me what the hell this song has to do with rock & roll? (Poppification aside, this is an actual genre and actually means something. Just because the Hall of Fame takes all kinds does not mean that anyone has carte blanche to just throw the term around like a…corporation baseball.) Or San Francisco, for that matter? I mean, hello, Memphis, ever hear of it?
That said, it’s stupid; it’s not stomach-churning irritating, preachy, unbearably sappy, or grossly offensive. Which puts it ahead of I Will Always Love You, Dreamlover, Don’t Cry Out Loud, Wind Beneath My Wings, You Can’t Hurry Love, Jesus Take The Wheel, Right Here Waiting, that Expose one about not getting over, et-damn-to-hell-cetera.
I’d put it in the same boat as Ragg Mopp, Got To Be Starting Something, Play Me, The Joker*, and pretty much anything by America, or as I’ve come to know them as, “Nickelback unplugged”.
Never mind that pompatous business, what the frag is a “midnight toker”??
The band was originally from San Francisco, which I think was the point.
I found the song to be overly self-righteous about commercialism, when it was so obvious that it was an exceedingly commercial song. That, and it just wasn’t a very good song.
EinsteinsHund - Aww, shucks. Hey, no biggie, just trying to see all sides here. Apparently that’s not always appreciated, but it’s great when it is.
kenobi - Oh. Still do not understand how that particular city was built on anything remotely resembling rock & roll. New Orleans, sure. Philadelphia, no problem. Seattle, you could make a case. Maybe Detroit. San Francisco? Cable cars, gay baths, Rice-a-roni, fine art, Chinatown, expensive housing? Nope, not seeing it.
The song is shit, if for no other reason than the radio edit, which deleted the “dj voice-over” to allow whichever platter-jockey was forced to air the turd to do his own patter in its place, specific to whatever market he was stuck in.
I hadn’t heard it before this thread, but was familiar with its reputation. I keep watching the video. It’s like a trainwreck. My favorite parts are the guy who doesn’t look like Able Lincoln playing his statue, and the weird little dance Grace Slick does when she sings the “Marconi plays the mamba” part after her verse. Actually, I like her verse itself. It sounds like she’s not even trying.
I think the 80’s had some great pop music, but this song isn’t among them. I don’t get how people defend this saying it’s catchy and fun, because to me it isn’t either. It’s depressing and joyless.
Jefferson Airplane? Grateful Dead? Quicksilver Messenger Service? Big Brother and the Holding Company? Santana? Blue Cheer? Sly and the Family Stone? CCR? The Bay Area counter-culture spawned a good number of seminal American bands in the 60s.
Couple of years ago, two friends and I were on an interstate motorcycle trip and stopped for the night in Coos Bay, Oregon, where we found a dive bar fitting my preference (feels like you’re below ground when you aren’t; single half-bitten egg floating in an underlit beaker of green fluid; bar mirror and bartender both antique and opaque from decades of nicotine resin).
I announced to the entire room (population: 4) that I was going to go pick out and play the worst song on the jukebox, and after studying the selection carefully, I did. That song was “We Built This City” by Starship. True story.
Those are all very bad songs as well, IMHO. Their relative suckage doesn’t make WBTC any better.
It’s obvious “catchy and fun” is completely subjective. As a teenager when the song was released, I didn’t carry any of the “Jefferson Airplane/ they’re so much better than this” baggage. But I thought the melody was pedestrian, overproduced, and not at all catchy; the lyrics were stupid on a stick; and the band sounded like they were phoning it in. Add to that the who “INSERT STATION ID” BS in the middle, which of course screamed “SELL OUT!” and you had a Very Bad Song.
It doesn’t make me throw up in my mouth or anything, but I will switch stations if it happens to be on.
The clearest memory I have of this song, involves MTV. At the time it came out, I was dating a guy who really took MTV seriously. (At one point he was very upset that they wasted a World Premier Video slot on The Fixx. No, I don’t know why I didn’t recognize that as a sign that the relationship was doomed. What can I say, he was cute. And that’s my excuse for having watched enough MTV to know this. Let’s move on.) MTV used to do promotions, and they had a “Star Ship” context for this album. They rented a boat, and had a cruise. Because a boat is a ship, see? And they had stars (musicians also currently promoting an album on MTV) on it, so it was a “Star Ship.” Get it?
So they kept showing clips of what a wonderful time everyone on this excursion had. Actually, they kept showing the same clip, over and over. The band was playing this song, and the camera angles clearly showed everyone else on the boat, standing there, bored. They weren’t paying any attention to the band, at all, they weren’t talking to each other, they were just looking like zombies. They didn’t even bother to clap when the song ended. And then some young female VJ would appear, screaming manically about how wonderful this was, because they were on a Star Ship with Starship (get it?) and they all stared at her like she was insane, which she may have been.
I regard this as incontrovertible proof that this is a bad song.
Heck, back in 1959 Tommy Facenda’s “High School USA” was released in 28 different versions featuring different high school names for various regions of the country.
As for “We Built This City,” it’s idiotic but the performers act like they’re making a big statement. You thus get a ghastly combination of cheese and pretentiousness.
Rock and roll is a terrible foundation for a city’s economy. I never read it because of the basic failure of the writers to understand how economics work.
