Bleh, now this awful song is in my head.
I seem to recall that there were regional versions of the chorus too, not just the DJ part.
We built this city
New York city
We built this city
on rock and roll
Unless you’re lucky enough to have a rock star with a bad accountant move into your 'burgh, most rock musicians would form an insufficient tax base for a modern city.
San Francisco has a fine musical tradition in the modern era, especially if you include the Monterey Pop Festival and the birth of modern metal when Metallica ended up locating in NoCal. So as a native NoCal’er I have no problem with claiming SF as a cool music city.
But that song - oy, that song…I think all the posts so far in this thread do a nice pile-on; there’s not a lot to add. Maybe the fact that it sounds like a clueless guy in a suit trying to rock out and get you to sing along…
All I remember is waking up abruptly to this song on my clock radio, nearly every morning of my Freshman year in high school, it was on an unholy “Good Morning Rotation” at the local hard rock station, and was just way-way overplayed on the radio, as well as MTV, period.
I have a bittersweet relationship with it, it’s nostalgic, kind of catchy in the blandest way possible, but it is distinctly mixed in with that physical memory and the psychic angst of jerking awake 5 days a week to its Popentonic, hell’s shanty chorus only to face those first scary and awkward days of High School.
It’s been pretty much covered in this thread, but for me:
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Terrible beat, horrible synth, bland melody. Shitty guitar “riffs” and “solo”.
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Trying to sound rebelious, they come off like a suit in the 90’s screaming “To the Extreme!” over and over.
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The DJ Patter thing in the middle.
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I can’t stand either of the singer’s voices. on this song. Yes, I like White Rabbit ok, but Grace Slick sounds completely different on WBTC, and not for the better.
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This song is rock and roll like I’m a ninja trained CIA agent with bone claws.
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Radio stations were apparently under a corporate mandate to play WBTC over and over until our brains melted. I know, I was there.
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“Someone always playing corporation games…” Wow. Just…damn.
And with all that said, I’m actually a big fan of a lot of 80’s pop. But this song was one of the worst pop songs of all time to me.
I’m not sure if anybody has posted this yet:
I heard on the radio that Blender had named it “the worst song of all time”. I thought to myself “Fuckin’ A”.
P.S. Yes, musical taste is somewhat subjective. But if you read that list and say to yourself “hey, I like that song!” more than once or twice, beware: everybody else thinks your musical taste is shit.
Also back in the seventies, there was a label called Pickwick Records that specialized in sound-alike knockoffs. I was suckered into buy one “Beatles” album that was all covers by some band I forget the name of (no doubt assembled just to perpetrate that record). The band’s name was in tiny print on a corner of the back cover, very easy to miss.
Also, “We Built This City” sucks, if this is a poll. I remember it seeming to me like not just a bad song, but a ridiculous song, almost as if it was supposed to be a parody of bad synth pop.
MrSquishy - Ugh…look, I just read through that list, and I really, really don’t think you should be using it as a source. I find myself wondering what the bloody hell these guys do like. I mean, they cited like 30 things that drive them nuts…how do they get through the day? (You can’t avoid avoid radios forever, y’know!) I stand by my assessment, i.e. stupid, but there’s much worse.
Is it really the overplay factor that’s causing so much loathing? I speak from extensive experience (we didn’t have much radio variety Hawaii until pretty recently) that any song that normally wouldn’t be too annoying can inspire white-hot rage when overplayed too much. I’m certain that this was the main problem with My Heart Will Go On, too.
I wondered about that too, because here (UK) We Built This City was not a major hit and was not played to death on radio or MTV. Besides, not that many people had MTV or similar channels at the time. I reckon I’ve only heard WBTC all the way through maybe ten times in my life, max?
While I’ve already expressed my dislike for this song, it is perhaps a little unfair to single it out exclusively. Pop music is littered with crass, boring, annoying and repetitive songs. ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’ by Middle Of The Road and ‘Sugar Sugar’ by the Archies are but two examples that make ‘We Built This City’ sound like a work of art.
We never heard of Middle of the Road in the U.S. – they never had a charted hit here. Our version of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep was by one-hit-wonders Mac and Kattie Kisson, who reached #20 in 1971. This was three months after Lally Stott’s version stalled at #92, the last we ever heard of him (her?).
The song is hokey, to say the least, but it doesn’t really get on my nerves or anything. Of course, I’ve had the pleasure of not hearing it for several years (except for the earworm that’s been lodged in my brain since this thread appeared. Darn you to heck, OP).
I remember an interview with Paul Kantner many years ago, it might have been a VH1 Behind the Music, and when Starship was mentioned he said, with utter contempt, " . . .no, no you *didn’t *build this city". I don’t recall exactly what else he said but his disdain for the incarnation of his one time band was red hot and funny as hell.
I don’t rember anything about the DJ part or it being customized for out local station, though I’ll take everyone’s word for it. Another song that I do remember getting that treatment was “Fire” by the Pointer Sisters
"I’m ridin’ in your car
You turn on the radio <insert station letters>
I haven’t heard that, but Robin Williams in his old stage act did a great rendition of “Fire” in the voice of Elmer Fudd:
“I’m widin’ in your car
You turn on the wadio…”
I like just seven of those songs, and have four of them on my iPod. Don’t you judge me!
I loved it at the time, but I was a child. Like 12 or 13. Listening to it again about 5 years ago, I couldn’t believe the craptastic sounds coming from the speakers. And that 45 single cover… Ouch!
And that 45 single cover… Ouch!
Joe
Y’all are just a bunch of uptight corporate drones, calling the Starship irresponsible and writing them off the page.
Long live faux rock and roll rebellion!
Oh my god!
How forgetful can you be? What’s all this discussion of WBtC being a song? Doesn’t anyone remember the eighties? Nancy Reagan? Just Say No?
Oh, sure, MTV may have had a parody version or something like that that seemed to be a music video (they were cutting edge from the start–hard to tell satire from reality even back then). But what everyone is talking about is actually just part of a commercial. I can’t seem to find the original on YouTube, but the first half varied with either Lather, Plastic Fantastic Lover, Somebody to Love, or White Rabbit, then a voiceover saying something to the effect of “beware kids, look what drugs will do to you…” before fading into We Built this City.
Powerful stuff.
God help me, this thread is going to make me go and listen to the song again.
DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU TO HELL, YOU DAMN DIRTY APES!
[Mr. Burns]Excellent[/Mr. Burns]