In 1985, the band known as Starship made music history. Apart from the Rolling Stones, they became the only other act to ever have three top-five singles in three different decades: the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The trifecta was thanks to “We Built This City,” a catchy anthem that enjoyed heavy rotation on the radio and on MTV.
“Short, snappy, with a catchy chorus, it is made for radio play,” wrote the Associated Press. “How can a song that constantly repeats ‘We built this city on rock ‘n roll’ go wrong?”
It was a question better left unasked. After a couple decades of relative tolerance, the public seemed to abruptly decide that “We Built This City” was not a good song. Instead, it was one of—if not the worst—songs ever recorded, a sentiment that even Starship’s band members appeared to share.
“ ’We Built This City,’ ” Starship singer Grace Slick said decades later, “is the worst song ever.”
A Record Disaster
Starship had taken a long and winding road to their 1980s incarnation. In 1965, Marty Balin and Paul Kantner formed Jefferson Airplane, a San Francisco-based rock troupe that eventually recruited Grace Slick on lead vocals. Band members came and went, and by 1974, the group had morphed into Jefferson Starship. In 1984, Kantner left, taking legal ownership of the Jefferson name with him. That left Slick, co-vocalist Mickey Thomas, guitarist Craig Chaquico, drummer Danny Baldwin, and bassist Pete Sears. It also left them with the truncated name Starship. Slick was the only band member to survive all three iterations. (She joined the band for Airplane’s second album, replacing Signe Anderson.)
But the band didn’t exactly originate their most infamous recording. In an ambitious oral history for GQ in 2016, author Rob Tannenbaum traced the origin of “We Built This City” to Bernie Taupin, the celebrated lyricist best known for his longtime collaboration with Elton John. Working with Martin Page, Taupin penned lyrics that he considered allegorical to the live music scene in Los Angeles, which was seeing a decline in live acts. Taupin and Page’s song was a lamentation of an industry that was increasingly about provocative, slick music videos, not intimate stage performances.
According to Taupin, however, their version didn’t have a lot to do with the finished product. “The original song was a very dark kind of mid-tempo song, and it didn’t have all this ‘We built this city!’ in it,” he told Rolling Stone in 2013. “It had none of that. It was a very dark song about how club life in L.A. was being killed off and live acts had no place to go. It was a very specific thing.”
Starship performs with singer Grace Slick (L). | Paul Natkin/GettyImages
Taupin’s song was tweaked by producer Peter Wolf, who added the “we built this city” chorus and began shopping a demo to different acts. He made his way to Starship, where he played the sample for guitarist Chaquico.
“About a minute in, he hit the pause button and in his Austrian accent started to sing, ‘Vee built dis seety on vock and VOLL,’ ” Chaquico told Tannenbaum.
Starship, which wanted to bank on populist, radio-friendly tracks, thought the song had potential. So did an MTV executive, who listened to it and told them they were sitting on a hit. They recorded it for their album Knee Deep in the Hoopla, which was released in 1985. Off the album came two No. 1s: the ballad “Sara” and the crowd-pleasing “We Built This City,” which knocked the powerhouse theme to the television hit Miami Vice off the top of the charts. “City” was also nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group. (It lost to Dire Straits and “Money for Nothing.”)
By any standard, commercial or otherwise, “We Built This City” was a massive success for Starship. But the song wouldn’t remain in good standing forever.
A ‘City’ in Ruins
If someone were to try and predict which song from 1985 would age poorly, “We Built This City” wouldn’t be a very strong contender. That year also saw the release of comedian Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time” and Lionel Ritchie’s maudlin “Say You, Say Me,” among others. But while these songs and others have their detractors, they didn’t suffer the fate of “City,” which fell victim to what amounted to a slow news cycle.
In 2004, the editorial staff of the music magazine Blender named “We Built This City” the “worst song ever,” topping a list that included “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus, “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” by Wang Chung, and “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. (And yes, Blender did give “Party All the Time” its due: It came in eighth.)
Blender’s hyperbolic list seemed to capture the attention of the national news media; CBS News ran a story on it, as did a number of other outlets. The VH-1 music channel, which colluded with Blender on the list, put it in front of viewers as part of a two-hour special, The 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs …Ever.
The media attention seemed to turn a subjective opinion into accepted wisdom, one that was echoed by music critics who jumped at the chance to pile on. “ ’We Built This City’ is a perfect pick,” wrote Albany Times Union columnist Greg Haymes. “[It’s] somewhat unexpected, yet a song that has gnawed at me for years. It is so self-congratulatory, so pompous. It proclaims itself to be real rock ‘n’ roll, and yet it’s so corporate and bland production-wise that it argues against itself.”
With little backlash to the ranking, “We Built This City” continued to take a beating. In 2006, Blender pulled another promotional stunt by having writer Russ Heller lock himself inside a booth and listen to the song a record 324 times in 24 hours. It was presented as a feat of endurance. In 2011, Rolling Stone opened the issue up to readers, who voted it the worst song of the 1980s—somewhat of an improvement over the worst of all time, but no less ignoble.
While Blender may have opened the door to mass reconsideration of the song, there was clearly a simmering resentment that went beyond not liking the chorus. One possible answer may lie in Starship’s evolution over the decades. Under the leadership of co-founder Paul Kantner, Jefferson Airplane had been a group unafraid to tackle political messaging. When he departed in 1984, it was, he said, because he felt the group was becoming too slick. “We Built This City” seemed to embody the idea of a band fueling the recording industry machinery—something that Starship’s previous counterculture status made unpalatable to purists. Smelling blood, even casual music fans nodded in agreement.
If that was the song’s sin, Thomas didn’t buy into it. “The stakes were higher because of the band’s past,” he told GQ. “People said, ‘You have to carry the mantle of the ’60s.’ C’mon. It’s 1985.”
Bad or good, “We Built This City” made—and continues to make—its artists money. “That was voted the worst song of all time in Spin or something, which I don’t necessarily disagree with, considering the way it turned out,” Taupin said. “Though I shouldn’t say that, because it was an [incredibly] successful song. It will probably help send my children to college, and I like that they play it at sporting events, being a sports fanatic.”
It’s possible the song may one day be reassessed yet again. For now, it appears that its 2000s-era infamy is staying put. In 2024, “We Built This City” was repurposed by Madison Avenue and turned into “We Quilt This City With a Comfy Roll.” The spot was for Quilted Northern toilet paper.
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