We got too many runaways eating up the night
September 20, 2016 12:58 PM   Subscribe

That album, for me, was musical hell. I joined the band in '74, and gradually the music had become vacuous, sterilized, escapist. It was an embarrassment. We had band meetings with big arguments. I probably should've tried harder to oppose it. I had a family. -- An oral history of Starship's "We Built This City."
posted by Chrysostom (176 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
“We Built This City” was written and recorded in stages, by an assembly line of songwriters. (Cancer, too, develops in stages.)

As does the Tour de France. And all three involve drugs of some kind.
posted by Celsius1414 at 1:02 PM on September 20, 2016 [12 favorites]


I'm very fond of "We Built This City." Call me irresponsible.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:06 PM on September 20, 2016 [34 favorites]


Incidentally, this is the same music critic who could dig deeper into the dubiousness of Donald Trump's foundation while waiting for his kid to come home from a playdate than apparently the entire New York Times election campaign desk.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:09 PM on September 20, 2016 [16 favorites]


I don't understand why I'm meant to hate it, and the article hasn't helped. Maybe I'm too young. It just sounds like a fun 80s song to me.
posted by Braeburn at 1:10 PM on September 20, 2016 [8 favorites]


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.

That sentence just has such a great Vonnegut unstuck-in-time feel to it; like Grace is still somehow being sober in the 80's, even today. And it is a bizarre decade to be sober in.

Also, I am disappointed that the embedded gifs and jpegs aren't working for me, though I keep having little bits of text in random spots which say "we-built-this-shitty-3.gif" which is amusing in its own way.
posted by nubs at 1:10 PM on September 20, 2016 [19 favorites]


Awesomeness warning that this autoplays "We Built This City," which is a fantastic song.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:12 PM on September 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


I think part of it is that the song just tries to patronize everyone. From the first line "We built this city on rock and roll" in a song that's basically synthpop to the break where the radio announcer goes on about "the city by the bay, the city that rocks, the city that never sleeps".

It's like if some soccer mom was trying to write a song that appealed to '80s kids. Little knowledge of the context and just throwing in as much shit about "WOO! ROCK!" as she can.
posted by Talez at 1:14 PM on September 20, 2016 [18 favorites]


this is the same music critic who could dig deeper into the dubiousness of Donald Trump's foundation while waiting for his kid to come home from a playdate than apparently the entire New York Times election campaign desk.

I wish he'd devote his talents to that then, because I'm reading the piece and while there's definitely a good story in "aging band delivers hit song they cringe at," the piece as written is hitting every pop music criticism cliche out there.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:16 PM on September 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


It was never clear to me if it was meant to be about LA or SF. Now I understand why.
posted by jeffamaphone at 1:17 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm sort of jesting (I do genuinely enjoy the song), but seriously I doubt any of America's last twelve poets laureate did anything as genius as having Jefferson Starship née Jefferson Airplane DBA Starship sing "who cares, they're always changing corporation names" with seeming total sincerity.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:18 PM on September 20, 2016 [24 favorites]


I don't hate this song at all, having grown up just enough ironic distance away from it to think that it's pretty good at doing what it does, but I think it says something that I could probably recreate the bulk of the arrangement from memory (because it's a very good, memorable arrangement, not because it's simple), but the lyrics would be mostly "beeda bada booda ... on the radio..." (because they are terrible and not only forgettable, but worthy of being forgotten).
posted by uncleozzy at 1:19 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don't see this song as any better or any worse than any throwaway pop song from the 80s, and particularly the clunky, clonky mid-80s. Sorry, I was there, and I lived through and know all the seething contempt that it inspires, but I'm not hating it. I'm certainly not gonna hate on it more than "Don't Stop Believin'," which everyone seems to think is so era-defining and inspirational.
posted by blucevalo at 1:22 PM on September 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


I remember roller skating to this in the 4th grade. Memories! I don't think it's a terrible song, honestly.
posted by Fister Roboto at 1:23 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm sort of jesting (I do genuinely enjoy the song), but seriously I doubt any of America's last twelve poet lauretes did anything as genius as having Jefferson Starship née Jefferson Airplane DBA Starship sing "who cares, they're always changing corporation names" with seeming total sincerity.

As I have heard it, this was a deliberate poke at Paul Kantner over the messy split and arguments over the rights to the name of the group.
posted by briank at 1:24 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's like if some soccer mom was trying to write a song that appealed to '80s kids.

That's pretty much it. By the mid-80s, "Rock and Roll" was only used to refer to 1950s songs by Elvis Presley and Bill Haley and the like, so the song sounded like some nostalgic "get off my lawn" from the get-go.
posted by cardboard at 1:28 PM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


I'm sort of jesting (I do genuinely enjoy the song), but seriously I doubt any of America's last twelve poet lauretes did anything as genius as having Jefferson Starship née Jefferson Airplane DBA Starship sing "who cares, they're always changing corporation names" with seeming total sincerity.

As I have heard it, this was a deliberate poke at Paul Kantner over the messy split and arguments over the rights to the name of the group.


Yeah, I'm sorry if that's true, or even a happy accident, I'm now the world's staunchest defender of this dumbass fun song.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:28 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


cocaine_barnacle would make a great user name.
posted by ryanshepard at 1:29 PM on September 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


I don't see this song as any better or any worse than any throwaway pop song from the 80s

Yeah, the problem most people have with the song is that it marked a low point for the band that performed it. To go from Woodstock to throwaway synth pop wasn't a trajectory that made sense to most of their fans.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:30 PM on September 20, 2016 [7 favorites]


I remember this as the first song that I felt was being aggressively marketed at me, rather than something I could enjoy organically. It was all over the radio, and we were being told that Jefferson Starship was a Big Deal for some reason. It was the mid-80's and rock and roll was still being successfully marketed as rebellious, but here was the least rebellious, pretentious pop song possible. I didn't hate it, but I resented it.

Hey, I was 11.
posted by phooky at 1:31 PM on September 20, 2016 [16 favorites]


It was just that the group HAD been the psychedelically awesome Jefferson Airplane that changed its name and became Not Awesome. It was fairly good for what it was, "a dumbass fun song", but there was a disconnect due to the somewhat-not-really-rock-and-rollish synthesizer-heavy style, and the step down from past Airplane music was rather extreme making it seem worse than it was.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:33 PM on September 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


I don't understand why I'm meant to hate it

Besides it being a fairly bad song with an earworm hook, there is the historical perspective. Starship, and Built this City in particular, was the ultimate proof that 60's and 70's music was over. Jefferson Airplane was a hugely influential psychedelic band, Jefferson Starship, at least in the beginning, was a psychedelic supergroup made up of people from JA, the Grateful Dead, Santana and David Crosby and Graham Nash. That faded quickly and JA was gone. In 1985, they are back, but instead of bring back some of the old sound they were known for -- you got Built this City. And, it was on the radio constantly.

On preview, lot of people beat me to it.
posted by rtimmel at 1:34 PM on September 20, 2016 [13 favorites]


Maybe I'm too young.
Yes. If you don't hate this song, you probably never had to sit through months of heavy rotation on the radio, and you probably never injured a finger jabbing at buttons on your car stereo to kill it fast enough.
posted by sageleaf at 1:37 PM on September 20, 2016 [31 favorites]


Starship, with The Outfield opening, was my very first concert. At an amusement park. Didn't go to the park specifically for them but since we were there... What's funny to me now is how flexible with music you can be at that age. Listened to the Smiths on the way in. To Husker Du on the way out. With this MOR schlock in the middle. And I enjoyed the schlock, without any qualifications.

Didn't think anything much about their big hit. A year later I'd get the Jefferson Airplane box set and the sadness of "We built this city" finally hit me.
posted by honestcoyote at 1:39 PM on September 20, 2016 [6 favorites]


I was alive when this song came out, but too young to remember it. Except I think they used the chorus on some commercials for Tower Records in the later-80's or early-90's maybe? I also don't hate it, although after reading this thread I get why some people do.
posted by KGMoney at 1:40 PM on September 20, 2016


I'm very fond of "We Built This City." Call me irresponsible.

That's not quite the word I was thinking, I'm afraid...
posted by Thorzdad at 1:42 PM on September 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


I was a big Jefferson Airplane fan. They made some really great music early on, then they got sort of irrelevant, then they disappeared. Then, much later, this thing comes on the radio. It was appalling, for the reasons that Talez lists. If it had been done by some trivial unknown bunch of no-talent eighties fools, I wouldn't have cared. As it was, it's like these remnants of the Airplane lined up to shit on the legacy of the Airplane, then wanted everyone to applaud.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 1:42 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


That's not quite the word I was thinking, I'm afraid...

Well, then, write me off the page!
posted by octobersurprise at 1:43 PM on September 20, 2016 [7 favorites]


If anyone desires a palate cleanser, I highly recommend "We Built This Village (On A Trad Arr Tune)," a track from the album "Achtung Bono" by the magnificently witty and diverting folk-punk band Half Man Half Biscuit, my favorite group ever to emerge from Liverpool. It's not at all a parody, doesn't sound much like the song it refers to, and actually is just an excuse for lovingly lampooning English country life, as Half Man Half Biscuit are often wont.
posted by koeselitz at 1:43 PM on September 20, 2016 [11 favorites]


I was in high school in the '80s, and in marching band (percussion). We played this song in our regular roster for at least a whole school year. It was the most boring arrangement ever. I dreaded having to slog through it again and again.

On the plus side, one year we performed a full-length in-house arrangement of "Bohemian Rhapsody" with a real rock band at the end, which was the best thing ever.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:47 PM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


I'm going to just listen to Bark and pretend this never happened.
posted by bgrebs at 1:48 PM on September 20, 2016


"That album, for me, was musical hell. I joined the band in '74, and gradually the music had become vacuous, sterilized, escapist ...
Is this remark siller than "We Built This City"? Quite possibly. Dude, Pete, you were fortunate enough to have a career playing in a band making rock and roll records. You chose to be an entertainer, not a member of Médecins Sans Frontières. Now I totally respect your wish not to play something you don't like, but "escapism" is the profession you chose.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:51 PM on September 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


Yeah, the problem most people have with the song is that it marked a low point for the band that performed it. To go from Woodstock to throwaway synth pop wasn't a trajectory that made sense to most of their fans.


Yeah, my father is not a man short on opinions but certainly wasn't the kind of guy to talk about what was on pop radio when I was growing up. Even still, though he was neither a Woodstock hippy or a musical snob, he was the person who explained exactly WHY the song was a problem to me based on who was singing it and who they'd been, and this has always stuck with me.* I think it gets a worse-than-deserved rap because even people like my dad were moved to speak out about it at the time.

But maybe it's just what it represented, like was said in the article:

The stakes were higher because of the band's past. People said, “You have to carry the mantle of the '60s.” C'mon. It's 1985.

But the 80s were about grinding the mantle of the 60s up and snorting it through a straw.

* Similarly, my father was not the type to objectify women in any noticeable way, but that does not mean I still did recognize his attraction to Grace Slick as he spoke of her, even at 10 years old. It's so strange what our brains remember.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:52 PM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


This is perfect!

I was just getting ready to do a workout in montage form!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:02 PM on September 20, 2016 [9 favorites]


I had just arrived in a small Ontario town to start grad school when this song hit it big. There was nothing on the radio there. The local campus station was uninspired (I know, I know, I could have gotten involved, but I was overwhelmed by the idea of being in grad school), the local CBC affiliate was broadcasting material intended for all of rural Ontario, and the interesting new music I had heard on the radio in Toronto was nowhere to be found. This song found a deserving slot in the wasteland populated by other acts that were big at the time (and I won't name, because I don't want to offend other MeFites). I ended up mostly listening to the classical NPR station from Watertown NY, where I discovered Saint Saens, Sibelius, and Garrison Keillor.

Yeah, I had bought and treasured Surrealistic Pillow and the Worst of JA back in high school. I never saw any connection between these two bands. I didn't even realize Grace was in Starship until I read that article.
posted by morspin at 2:05 PM on September 20, 2016


I'm very fond of "We Built This City." Call me irresponsible.

Awesomeness warning that this autoplays "We Built This City," which is a fantastic song.


FLAGGED
posted by leotrotsky at 2:07 PM on September 20, 2016 [6 favorites]


Imagine Bob Marley singing “We Built This City.”

Instead I imagine what someone who says this actually means

*shudder*
posted by mikeh at 2:07 PM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


My favorite part of this so far is when they all try to figure out what "Marconi plays the mamba" might mean.
posted by not that girl at 2:07 PM on September 20, 2016 [9 favorites]


In a way, this oral history just kind of encapsulates the underlying strangeness of the song (to me); there's a quote about how the early demo was a dark song about how there is no club life, no place to play, and then it's about how things change (Marconi plays the mamba: things change, man), and then everyone is just commenting on how it made them money.

Which is always how it kind of felt to me; there might have been something there, once, but things change and the song became about making money somewhere along the line.
posted by nubs at 2:12 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Member of successful '80s band: Our producer brought the demo to us. It's the most pussy thing I've ever heard. “Knee-deep in the hoopla”? Well, even Mark Twain wrote some bad prose. Don't quote any of this.
I would really love to know who said this.
posted by curiousgene at 2:16 PM on September 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


People trying to contextualize the song for those who weren't there are leaving out a thing that Craig Chaquico touches on in the article. The song (not an utter abomination in and of itself) began a two year period of absolutely inescapable Starship songs: "We Built This City,” “Sara,” and “Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now.” And I seem to recall "It's Not Over ('Til It's Over)" getting a metric shit-ton of radio/MTV play as well.
posted by kimota at 2:17 PM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


Look, the main problem is that a song purportedly about rock 'n' roll is not, in any way, at all, rock and/or roll.
posted by Celsius1414 at 2:17 PM on September 20, 2016 [10 favorites]


Related, and amazing: The video for "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" (to the tune of which I once held hands with my coworkers in the dark during a truly surreal team-building offsite in Singapore) was apparently made in concert with the movie Mannequin.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:22 PM on September 20, 2016 [6 favorites]


You know, in retrospect, I should have titled the FPP, "When the truth is found to be lies."
posted by Chrysostom at 2:24 PM on September 20, 2016 [12 favorites]


to the tune of which I once held hands with my coworkers in the dark during a truly surreal team-building offsite in Singapore

Now that's something that sounds like it deserves an oral history.
posted by nubs at 2:26 PM on September 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


I've been playing a string of Faces songs which seem to be stopping me from getting this filthy earworm into my brain. Nothing like a band successfully walking the knife edge between trainwreck and transcendence to keep insipid crap like this at bay.
posted by Ber at 2:27 PM on September 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


The back and forth about Marconi playing the mamba/mambo reminds me of a dialog from a Christopher Guest movie. It's wonderful.
posted by dismas at 2:30 PM on September 20, 2016 [7 favorites]


I'm pretty sure that "My Sharona" was the worst song of all time. I have to admit that one of my reasons for strongly disliking the song, aside from the song itself, is that people kept comparing the Knack to the Beatles, and if the actual Beatles had decided to turn themselves into the Knack, it would have been as strong a disconnect as Jefferson Airplane becoming Starship.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:30 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


A city built on rock n roll is structurally unsound.
posted by Catblack at 2:31 PM on September 20, 2016 [14 favorites]


The video for "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" (to the tune of which I once held hands with my coworkers in the dark during a truly surreal team-building offsite in Singapore) was apparently made in concert with the movie Mannequin.

In fact, it's from the Mannequin soundtrack. Mannequin, of course, was most influential in spawning Crow T. Robot's obsession with Kim Cattrall.
posted by praemunire at 2:31 PM on September 20, 2016 [16 favorites]


Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now

Excellent- I've just finished the workout montage, and now that I have renewed confidence in myself and *checks*...my jiujitsu abilities (?), I'm going to run downtown on a rainy evening to meet the girl I love outside of the bar where she works!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:33 PM on September 20, 2016 [7 favorites]


A city built on rock n roll is structurally unsound.
Built on rock: very solid. Built on roll: subject to baked goods compression; will shift severely in an earthquake. Okay for Cleveland, NOT for San Francisco.

Also, "Lights", which is about "the city by the bay", is the only Journey song I can stand and the only '80s "About San Francisco" that kinda works, even though the "oh oohs" and "la la las" substituting for lines in the lyric are SO LAZY.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:38 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Is the demo of the song that they discuss in the article anywhere on the web? I'm really curious to hear it.
posted by wittgenstein at 2:40 PM on September 20, 2016


My main objection to We Built This City was that, in the video, it looked like they were playing guitars, but the sound I was hearing did not resemble a guitar in any way. Also, there was their hair.

For me, a good counterpoint to WBTC is Jefferson Airplane performing "The House at Pooneil Corners on a rooftop in NYC in 1968.
posted by curiousgene at 2:41 PM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


I agree that kicking around this tune is too easy nowadays and potentially marks a generational divide and makes it ripe to re-emerge a la don't stop believin'.

The thing that struck me at the time when I saw a poster at a record store was that a band past their prime was claiming to be knee-deep in the hoopla when that slogan clearly was thought up before the record came out. It seemed delusional when I first read it, and then I was surprised that the song actually became a hit.
posted by umbú at 2:45 PM on September 20, 2016


The verse is 8 bars that has a drone bass note under it, and a slightly revolting chord sequence, so you're basically waiting for anything to happen as relief, but you're still bolted to the spot - it's good songwriting, and the proof is it doesn't even need a guy who seems to be a singer to deliver it in the first verse.

But the pre-chorus is a strange thing that starts as if it's going to contain 8 bars, but then begins to chop itself to pieces and ends up being 10 bars long. Check out how it confuses the ear after you've heard 'Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio' - there's a few bars then that seem to prepare the ear for either a push up or push downwards. That's what makes the song - it mediates tension and release very well.
posted by Coda Tronca at 2:47 PM on September 20, 2016 [8 favorites]


My favorite part of this so far is when they all try to figure out what "Marconi plays the mamba" might mean.

Ah, they must have missed the day my junior-high World History teacher gleefully seized upon this lyric as an excuse to lecture us for 20 minutes on Guglielmo Marconi, thus proving that World History is so relevant to the modern American teen, damn it.

Which is a shame.
posted by BrashTech at 2:48 PM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


I feel like a lot of people have been in this same situation in their professional lives. A group project that nobody believes in but nobody wants to say so because they feel like maybe other people believe in it, and who wants to be the wet blanket? So everyone plays this game of chicken where they're all phoning it in but want to at least put up the appearance of trying. The individuals participating in it are all accomplished, generally hard workers, and hey, maybe something good will come out of it, because sometimes something does, even when conditions aren't ideal.

And then when it's finished, you look at it, realize it's a piece of shit, and agree never to speak of it again.

Thankfully, for most of us, our shitty projects aren't played on the radio 30 years later.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:00 PM on September 20, 2016 [7 favorites]


Wow, I was never a fan of Airplane, but this, this was so bad it was shorthand for everything wrong with the music biz.
It's really the ultimate repudiation of everything Volunteers of America was all about. When old folks talk about selling out, we're not talking about boy bands or other corporate nonsense that never had meaning besides making a buck, we're talking about this.
This is why punk rock, this is why anti corporate anything.
Fuck me.
I'm done here, I need to go run 'til I don't need to harm anyone.
posted by evilDoug at 3:03 PM on September 20, 2016 [6 favorites]


I always thought the lyric was "Tony plays the mambo," and wondered who the hell Tony was.


Of course, I also used to think that "A werewolf has my Arabian drums" was a lyric in Bob Dylan's "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands."
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:07 PM on September 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


"We Built This City" was becoming a hit just as I was becoming a college DJ. I hated everything about that song and my hatred is divorced from the band that performs it. It could have been any group of corporate stooges that performed this song. That said, I think part of the reason it was a hit was because it was this particular group of corporate stooges. If you look at the 80's, there were a number of rock bands from the 70's who had huge hits with almost identical sounds (I'm particularly looking at Heart and Aerosmith, though those two bands were hardly alone). I get it, making money doing what you love is a good thing. I don't begrudge them the right to play crap if that's what people are buying. If they didn't, somebody else would and we always have their earlier less-crappy albums to enjoy.

The song itself, however, is one of the most over-produced corporate rock tunes ever created. From the grating keyboard hook to the what-the-fuck-the-rest-of-the-band-was-doing (they must have been playing something - I think there's evidence of drums and maybe a rudimentary bass line), it is unchallenging at every turn. This song was not the start of the crappy 80's sound - it wasn't even the cynical apex of the crappy 80's sound. It was an assembly lined produced product made of pure 80's crappy sound that was structurally identical to 50 other crappy 80's hits.

Then the lyrics kick in. I'd love to do a lengthy close reading of them, but let me summarize by saying that the song has always come across to me as a sneering "You think you know music? You weren't there back in the day! We were there back in the day! We built this city, you hear me kid? We built it! This city is ours!" What egomanical, entitled bullshit. Oh no! Things are changing in your music scene! Are you going to change with it? Hell no, we're going to complain that you corporate music industry types just don't know how to make real music the way we did back in the day! And we're going to prove that you don't know how to make music... by making exactly the kind of corporate rock we're complaining about.

This song is everything that it complains about. I mean, if this music had a physical body, it would be Donald Trump, endlessly doing shitty things then complaining about people who do those same shitty things. Fuck this song for existing, for getting so much airplay in the 80's, and just fuck.

And it wasn't even the worst example of shitty stupidly popular 80's corporate rock. Presented for your consideration. Does that even count as a song? Is that music? We thought so in 1985.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:07 PM on September 20, 2016 [14 favorites]


I can't find the original demo, but did find this:

The song changed drastically from its original demo, which Martin Page composed using Bernie Taupin's lyrics. The song was a cry of rebellion against a corporation trying to ban rock and roll in an imaginary future, but by the time Starship was done with it, it sounded more like a celebration of rock music in San Francisco, although a keen listen to the lyrics does reveal its distrust.


and from a different section:

The disc jockey interlude was not part of the original demo. In that spot, the song's co-writer Martin Page had put a police report broadcasting news of a riot in Los Angeles - something that came on when he turned on the radio looking for something to fill that part of the song.

The police report made the song far more ominous and stuck to the original vision as written by Bernie Taupin. Starship's producers replaced this part with a sunny announcer taking about "another gorgeous sunny Saturday" and delivering standard DJ patter ("the city that rocks, the city that never sleeps!"), changing the complexion of the song.


Which I think is where this song disconnects; it started as a dark/distrustful song (and the lyrics do reflect that) but the performance is celebratory - I might even say triumphant - from the music to the vocals. It's not that I don't think the song could have been performed in such a way as to sound celebratory but also be a darker look at a situation, but it never found that fit, at least to my ear; it comes across as plastic, not a mockery or criticism of the increasing corporate control of music but as a part/example of it. I think a version with the same sound and performance but with audio of a police report of a riot instead of the DJ would add in an interesting contrast and maybe give it some heft & weight.
posted by nubs at 3:11 PM on September 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


Wow, I was never a fan of Airplane, but this, this was so bad it was shorthand for everything wrong with the music biz.

This is not, not, not the Airplane. Paul Kantner, Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, Marty Balin: not building city on rock and roll, in the 80's. The oral history says Kantner had just left in disgust. Balin was making soft rock of the "Your listen at work station!" variety. Casady and Kaukonen started touring as Hot Tuna again, which they are still doing.
posted by thelonius at 3:13 PM on September 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


it is unchallenging at every turn. This song was not the start of the crappy 80's sound - it wasn't even the cynical apex of the crappy 80's sound. It was an assembly lined produced product made of pure 80's crappy sound that was structurally identical to 50 other crappy 80's hits.

There may well be assembly line pop, but there's no such thing as assembly line number one hits. Pop music is a very fast moving target and whoever hits it, hits it with a combination of luck, endless labour, inspiration from some mad place, and god knows what random else.

This song is not structurally identical to 50s pop. The extended/delayed anacrusis at end of the pre-chorus is kind of the theme of uncertainty underlying the whole song. It's cool to say 'we built this city on rock and roll' if you have a musical foundation that is self-doubting set up with the musical framework that has prefaced that chorus. It's melancholy.
posted by Coda Tronca at 3:21 PM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


Another point of context:

Starship was one of many "old" bands--back when being in your 40s in music was considered ancient--who could only conceive of being a going concern without much purpose. They weren't alone in this regard: see Yes, Rolling Stones, Moody Blues, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Genesis, etc. All of these bands/musicians knew that they wanted to stay together and make music, but what kind of music would they make? They all had legacies that in many ways were both beneficial and burdensome, and many if not all of them had critical and commercial successes over the last decade or two. Leaving the public eye didn't appear to be an option, so they all decided in their own fashion to stay relevant. If this meant churning out synth-pop, then so be it.
posted by stannate at 3:26 PM on September 20, 2016 [6 favorites]


Here is a 1986 live (NOT lipsynced) version of the song, which is improved by having the band physically play it (the record is *all* MIDI, save for the guitars), but pay attention to Grace Slick, who seems, well, bored and restless.
posted by tantrumthecat at 3:27 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


Ever since I first saw the video Singin' Abe Lincoln Memorial always looked like someone, but I could never put my finger on who. Now he reminds me of Chris Meloni.

This article makes me like everyone involved with the song a lot more. Except for Les Garland. Does/did the entertainment industry attract those types or create those types at some sort of a Robert Evans Finishing School For Creepy Old Assholes Who Think They're The Cat's Ass?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 3:29 PM on September 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


My favorite part of this so far is when they all try to figure out what "Marconi plays the mamba" might mean.

I always thought the lyric was "Tony plays the mambo," and wondered who the hell Tony was.


I always thought it was "Marconi plays La Bamba", since Richie Valens' old '50s song was considered one of the early "DJ-driven hits" and that makes me imagine the inventor of radio as a '50s DJ, and I thought that was the cleverest lyric in the song. Well, two more points off.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:35 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm a child of the 80s, and I have fond memories of this song.

This article makes me think that we're running out of soapboxes.
posted by SpacemanStix at 4:54 PM on September 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


See the thing is, you can have fun vapidity. "Girls Wanna Have Fun" has not much content, but you don't care, it's a pop song, it's happy/harmless. You will eventually get tired of it, but it will not fill you with despair, and after a short break, you can listen to it again with pleasure.

This song was made of dreary vapidity. Weird, incomprehensible lyrics making claims of music authenticity/appeal to nostalgia, a driving but droning sort of relentless hook, and here's the sin, no joy. It has no joy in it! It has loudness and fastness, but the longer you listen to it (and in the 80s you could not escape it) the emptier and dead-er it sounds.
posted by emjaybee at 4:55 PM on September 20, 2016 [12 favorites]


First of all, Balin's "Hearts" is a good song.

Secondly, WBTC was just the breakout hit on that album, but it was the subsequent singles that cemented this song as a vapid Hooters reject.
posted by rhizome at 4:57 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


This song just yells at you. I feel like it's calling me out for something, but whatever it's accusing me of doesn't really make much sense. I apparently pay too little respect to my forbears, who built a city on rock and roll that I take for granted. Well, fuck their terrible city. Fuck you, Starship.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:05 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


This song reminds me of riding in a Reagan/Bush stickered volvo station wagon with a friend's mom (wearing appliqued duck sweater and matching turtleneck over her dreary long pleated jean skirt) and friend's mom doing little enthusiastic fist pumps along with the song, as she explained how she'd once been a big fan of Grace Slick and how cool she'd been back in the 60s and would you just listen to Grace now. What a trooper!

I remember looking at my mortified friend and just shaking my head and feeling an early wave of what I would later recognize as Whatever, Boomers.

(And yes, I'm well aware the kids are feeling the same thing about me now).
posted by thivaia at 5:08 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


I can neither explain nor justify it, but I feel strongly nostalgic about the sound/vibe of "Broken Wings" by Mr. Mister, though the lyrics are unexceptional.

"We Built This City," on the other hand, elicits not even the tiniest shred of nostalgia for me. When I watch the video, I feel so thoroughly detached from it that I could be some alien race's Xenoanthropologist or something, dispassionately reviewing a cultural artifact. "Yes, I see," says alien-observer-me, vastly and coolly, "this song is a metaphor." And then I check a box on an alien clipboard and move on.
posted by tclark at 5:16 PM on September 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


This song always makes me think of Casey Kasem, in his jumper. I generally saw America's Top 10 (or whatever number it was) very stoned at about three o'clock in the morning, and for some reason it all seems to boil down to this song. In my mind, Casey's afterlife is excitedly telling the world that this song is number one, on a loop, forever. I hope he likes it.
posted by Grangousier at 5:33 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


apparently made in concert with the movie Mannequin

which is a weird movie with a deeply creepy premise.

is there any song which is self referentially about "rock n roll" that isn't objectively terrible?
posted by ennui.bz at 5:51 PM on September 20, 2016


"this song is a metaphor." And then I check a box on an alien clipboard and move on.

Don't you remember
We built this song, we built this song as a met-a-phor
posted by nubs at 5:58 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


is there any song which is self referentially about "rock n roll" that isn't objectively terrible?

Hell yes! KISS, The Beatles (Chuck Berry), Twisted Sister, Rolling Stones, Joan Jett (The Arrows), Ian Dury...
posted by rhizome at 5:58 PM on September 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


is there any song which is self referentially about "rock n roll" that isn't objectively terrible?

The Ramones have a couple.

(Count me among the We Built This City is a terrible, awful, just godawful song brigade)
posted by rodlymight at 5:58 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


is there any song which is self referentially about "rock n roll" that isn't objectively terrible?

Despite all the computations, you know you could just dance to that rock 'n' roll station.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:09 PM on September 20, 2016 [6 favorites]


First of all, Balin's "Hearts" is a good song.

"Hearts" is awesome. That's because Marty Balin strode like a god among pop singers/writers.

This song was made of dreary vapidity. Weird, incomprehensible lyrics making claims of music authenticity/appeal to nostalgia, a driving but droning sort of relentless hook, and here's the sin, no joy

Counterpoint: It's catchy as hell; the lyrics are hilarious; and Grace Slick sounds fab. That's all it needs and all I want from it. I won't go to bat for the other Starship singles, which are mostly dull, plaintive power ballads, but "We Built This City" is a delightful confection.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:11 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


I can neither explain nor justify it, but I feel strongly nostalgic about the sound/vibe of "Broken Wings" by Mr. Mister, though the lyrics are unexceptional.

I knew someone who kicked a heavy addiction habit by running the lyrics for this song thru his head. It's surprising what art can do.
posted by ovvl at 6:17 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


You know, I think we should really start re-evaluating Steve Winwood's '80s work, too. I mean, maybe I'm just getting old, but it's not terrible, and there really is something about it that wait a minute, what the hell is going on in this video?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:26 PM on September 20, 2016 [8 favorites]


It was a very celebratory time; a bunch of guys who were knocking on middle age suddenly had a No. 1 song. Everyone was drinking $100 snifters of brandy.

As their bartender at a tour stop in Des Moines, Iowa c. 1987, I can state unequivocally that did NOT include a tip. Grace, to her credit, was not in attendance.

They spent the night trashing her mercilessly and prodding M. Thomas to lead some kind of coup.
posted by hal9k at 6:30 PM on September 20, 2016 [10 favorites]


is there any song which is self referentially about "rock n roll" that isn't objectively terrible?

Perhaps, only one...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sUXMzkh-jI
posted by littlejohnnyjewel at 6:34 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


The No. 3 song on that Blender list was “Everybody Have Fun Tonight,” by Wang Chung, which Peter Wolf produced. I called him and said, “Dude, I'm on one of the worst songs ever, but you're on two. That's awesome!”

This whole article is pretty hilarious. I still have my Jefferson Airplane CD's.
posted by bukvich at 6:39 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I really really try to pride myself on being open-minded about various music-genres throughout history, but that 80's corporate-style pop-rock anthems are my Achilles-heel, having lived thru it when I was young. It's all just venom to me.

But I do like Marty Balin's ballads, and Phil Collins' ballads.
posted by ovvl at 6:41 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think we should really start re-evaluating Steve Winwood's '80s work, too

I unashamedly love Arc of a Diver and Back in the High Life, tho Talking Back to the Night not so much. (Also a big fan of Tango in the Night.)
posted by octobersurprise at 6:42 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


The part where they discuss the lyric "Marconi plays the mamba," and what it meant cracks me up. There is some serious commitment to songwriting craft on display right here:

Thomas: Bernie didn't say “mambo,” he said “mamba,” which is a snake. Marconi created the radio. Maybe Bernie meant to say “mambo.” Maybe it means: If you don't like this music, some really angry snakes are gonna come out of the speakers.
...
Thomas: At one point I did start to sing “mambo,” to try and be more grammatically correct, and after a while I thought, “Fuck it,” and went back to “mamba.”

posted by saulgoodman at 7:10 PM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


Huh, so apparently not only does an incarnation of Starship still exist but concurrently, so does a version of Jefferson Starship and both are still touring. There have been so many members of Jefferson Starship that the list of them has it's own page on Wikipedia.
posted by octothorpe at 7:17 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm not a fan of this kind of '80s stuff, generally, but I *love* Winwood's "Valerie." Takes me right back to grade eight, in a good way, and the production is just perfect for the song.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:17 PM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


And "We Built This City" is awful, but I'd rather listen to it than lots of the slop the Stones put out in the '80s.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:21 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I remember looking at my mortified friend and just shaking my head and feeling an early wave of what I would later recognize as Whatever, Boomers.

(And yes, I'm well aware the kids are feeling the same thing about me now).


Sort of. They're all saying "Whatever, Boomers" too.
posted by Celsius1414 at 7:32 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I like liking some songs everyone else hates. I un-ironically like some 80s stuff to this day (hell yeah, Wang Chung, that's a fun song). I admit liking many more at the time that I'm embarrassed about now.

But there was never a time I didn't think "this song is objectively shit."* I was 15 in 1985, and that song already had that feeling when you turn on the radio, and a song you've never heard before sounds painfully like 1000 songs you've heard to death and can't take any more. I mean, not the same, just blandly the same. It's perfect in that trope where someone's listlessly changing channels and all you hear is a couple of seconds of each. *click* Sunday Sunday SUNDAY! *click* today the Dow Jones Industrial average *click* We built this city! *click*

I didn't know anything about Jefferson Airplane. The musicians just don't even sound like they're having any fun. (turns out they weren't, I guess)

*phrase stolen from a mefi post, I think, on My Pal Foot Foot. I thought of WBTC when that post was made.
posted by ctmf at 7:32 PM on September 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


Yes. If you don't hate this song, you probably never had to sit through months of heavy rotation on the radio, and you probably never injured a finger jabbing at buttons on your car stereo to kill it fast enough.

"Finger?" Pussy. I kept a .410 gauge shotgun at the ready for just such an occasion.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:33 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


> which is a weird movie with a deeply creepy premise.

That description fits a lot of fondly-remembered '80s movies these days.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:37 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


But over the years, as '80s music began to sound dated and ludicrous—and no song sounds more '80s than “We Built This City”—it developed a hideous reputation: the worst song of all time.

No, that is wrong. It sounded like the worst song I'd ever heard the minute it came out. Everyone I knew mocked it relentlessly.

I never liked or cared about Jefferson Airplane, and though the history may have made it even more easy to hate, it was the song itself that was pure shit. The thing I find weird is the re-writing of history to claim people only started thinking it was bad in the 2000's. Long before it's appearance on any list it was shorthand for "worst song ever".
posted by bongo_x at 8:01 PM on September 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


Well, I'm not a fan of this song at all but I still thought Grace Slick had the most amazing voice (check out this beauty from 1980!) The thing that really gets me about this article is right down at the bottom where they're saying that 'Rock Me Amadeus' is a bad song. I mean, how dare they!
posted by h00py at 8:03 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


is there any song which is self referentially about "rock n roll" that isn't objectively terrible?

Are you completely unfamiliar with AC/DC, Motorhead, The Ramones, or The Rolling Stones?
posted by bongo_x at 8:04 PM on September 20, 2016 [6 favorites]


I agree with the premise that it isn't so much that "We Built This City" is uniquely awful, as much as it is a really bad song that Grace Fucking Slick, the same person who sang "White Rabbit", chose to be a participant in.

I mean, Don't Forget Me When I'm Gone by Glass Tiger is a pretty corny, vapid song too, but nobody really remembers it (no pun intended). If it had been released by John Fogerty in the mid-80s it would be remembered as an all-time stinker.
posted by The Gooch at 8:06 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


is there any song which is self referentially about "rock n roll" that isn't objectively terrible?

Are you completely unfamiliar with AC/DC, Motorhead, The Ramones, or The Rolling Stones?


Not to mention Led Zeppelin
posted by Daily Alice at 8:32 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


...is a pretty corny, vapid song too, but nobody really remembers it...

I remember all of those songs, and I don't like them. The memories that I actually like from the 80's mostly involve moody, droney, alienated bands from the UK.
posted by ovvl at 8:39 PM on September 20, 2016


If it had been released by John Fogerty in the mid-80s it would be remembered as an all-time stinker.

Perhaps, but in the mid-80s Fogerty was still full of piss and vinegar and released decidedly really good stuff, though the baseball song is played out.
posted by rhizome at 8:49 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


The company logo shown when she sings "Who cares, they're always changing corporation names" is Maruzen Petrochemical. It was founded 57 years ago as "Maruzen Petrochemical", and currently is named "Maruzen Petrochemical".
posted by Bugbread at 8:56 PM on September 20, 2016 [12 favorites]


I've always hated this song - when I was growing up in the 90s, I worshipped the 60s and hated the 80s. I know it's changed now, but the old Jefferson Airplane stuff still sounds amazing and trippy and groundbreaking and weird. We Built This City... doesn't.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 9:18 PM on September 20, 2016


It's also a song about rock and roll that doesn't rock, and as a rockist I took that sort of thing VERY seriously, building theologies around it.

Is this remark siller than "We Built This City"? Quite possibly. Dude, Pete, you were fortunate enough to have a career playing in a band making rock and roll records. You chose to be an entertainer, not a member of Médecins Sans Frontières. Now I totally respect your wish not to play something you don't like, but "escapism" is the profession you chose.

If I still had access to it, I'd post my quote about how rock and roll can 'heal the most wounded and desperate among us'. It's not just 'escapism'.

posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 9:18 PM on September 20, 2016


That quote's a little uncharitable, since Pete Sears played on the only Rod Stewart solo records that could ever be said to mean anything, including "Maggie May." I can see him feeling like he was sold a bill of goods.
posted by rhizome at 9:33 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


See, I interpreted they lyrics at the time basically as "Get off my lawn."

Not that phrase exactly (too young to know it and it wasn't common parlance then, iirc), but that vibe of "let's fake bitch with convoluted forced baloney lyrics" based especially of the use of the word "hoopla".

But my tweens love dancing to it. They think it's delightfully old fashioned. And muppety.
posted by tilde at 9:39 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


In my mind, Casey's afterlife is excitedly telling the world that this song is number one, on a loop, forever. I hope he likes it.

So you think Kasem went to hell?

I don't really have an opinion about WBTC, as I was around 2-3 at the time. I do like Steve Winwood's 80s stuff, though. Maybe it's a sort of gestalt thing that, not having experienced, cannot be understood.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:30 PM on September 20, 2016


We Built This City sold well, so there must have been a lot of fans, but at the same time there were a ton of people who hated it. And I'm not talking about sullen "I hate everything on the radio because I am so indie" teens. Looking at the Billboard top 100 for 1985, it was 14, followed by "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and "Don't You (Forget About Me)" by the Simple Minds. I never heard anyone complain about those songs. Heck, even number 13, one place above it, "Can't Fight This Feeling," by REO Speedwagon, was in a more similar vein, but I never heard anyone complain about it. But "We Built This City" had a fuckton of detractors from the day it came out.

Note: I really hated it when it came out, but for some reason I like it now.
Note 2: Yes, I realize that you have such amazing musical tastes that you personally hated Huey Lewis, and Simple Minds, and REO Speedwagon. You probably hated them before I had even heard of them. I'm talking general zeitgeist.
posted by Bugbread at 10:31 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


WBTC came out when I was a wee lass and when I try to mumble sing it, it suddenly morphs into Duran Duran (Hungry Like the Wolf). Speaking of Duran Duran, the video for Rio is like the perfect encapsulation of the breezy, image conscious 80s (just like Nik Kershaw's The Riddle is everything that was kind of odd about the 80s. People only remember the breezy, pastel suit parts of 80s music because they are easier to mock, but there was a lot that was very poetic and a little wyrd).
posted by glitter at 10:49 PM on September 20, 2016


This song would be nothing, absolutely zero, and we probably wouldn't have heard the aftersingles, if not for MTV.
posted by rhizome at 11:03 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


You know I think Starship is at least partly responsible for 80s Heart and maybe even Van Hagar.
posted by rhizome at 11:04 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


How did this outpopular the Miami Vice Theme?
posted by monopas at 11:05 PM on September 20, 2016


A major smash song never stops earning money. I've probably written 500 songs, but ten of them earn 90 percent of the money I make.

We built this city. We built this city on Pareto's law. Built this city.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:20 PM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


Speaking of Duran Duran, the video for Rio is like the perfect encapsulation of the breezy, image conscious 80s

For me the perfect encapsulation of the 80's is Sigue Sigue Sputnik. I don't know how anything could be more 80's.
posted by bongo_x at 11:27 PM on September 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


How did this outpopular the Miami Vice Theme?

"Miami Vice Theme" had built-in exposure via TV that charts didn't capture. However, it wasn't outperformed by that much, and in fact WBTC was the song that knocked MVT out of #1 in the US! WBTC was on the chart for 24 weeks, edging out MVT's 22.

I wouldn't say WBTC has enjoyed much longevity over MVT's. I'm not in my teens-20s anymore, but I bet most of the royalties are licensing. I think it's fair to say that until this story came along the song had been as much of a cultural pariah as MVT ever was.

For a little extra poignancy, Mr. Mister's "Broken Wings" was the song that knocked WBTC out of #1...in Canada. The US gave some song from the movie "White Nights" the #1 slot the week the movie was released before a young Mr. Mister took their place and taught us how to feel.
posted by rhizome at 11:30 PM on September 20, 2016


For me the perfect encapsulation of the 80's is Sigue Sigue yt Sputnik yt . I don't know how anything could be more 80's.

It was a decade of contrasts, what can I say.
posted by glitter at 12:25 AM on September 21, 2016


For me the perfect encapsulation of the 80's is Sigue Sigue Sputnik. I don't know how anything could be more 80's.

Naah. That was always trying too hard, even at the time. Sputnik consciously tried to push that eighties styling while Duran Duran and co just lived it.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:34 AM on September 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


I never thought of SSS as trying too hard, I just thought of Duran Duran being conservative and focused on other people's opinions. "Yes, something risque, but not too risque, what would the neighbors think?"
posted by Bugbread at 12:52 AM on September 21, 2016


But, yeah, SSS wasn't the 80s, it was a band from a future where the 80s never ended but kept following the same trajectory.
posted by Bugbread at 12:53 AM on September 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


Sorry, rhizome, it was my tiny attempt at humor. Partly because the video for WBTC is so excruciating, and the lyrics are preyty much gibberish, yet the MVT is still badass. It is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison. But, with no snark and all truth, thank you for sending me down the musical nostalgia clickhole!

I was 9 in 1985, and I have just run through the Billboard list Bugbread posted. I can sing the chorus, at minimum, for most of the list.

BTW, I loved the whole damn Mr Mister album. I wore out that cassette. Though I prefer Kyrie to Broken Wings. Because there's Latin, and its happy. I also like U2 and disco and probably have questionable taste.

The article was a great example of how the sausage is made, music edition.
posted by monopas at 2:04 AM on September 21, 2016


Compared to other "rock" songs about rock, this is not a bad song.

Eric Clapton's song about rock? That is a bad song. Why? It doesn't rock.
posted by Foosnark at 5:04 AM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


is there any song which is self referentially about "rock n roll" that isn't objectively terrible?

Yes, but just this one by Jac Berrocal
posted by rock swoon has no past at 5:05 AM on September 21, 2016


That article was one of the funniest oral histories I have read. Most of the time these things read something like "Well, we all struggled and didn't always get along, and the critics panned it at first, but looking back we all had a good time and now our shared struggle has made us life long friends." Instead we get "God, that sucked. Everything sucked back then, and I was surrounded by jerks." Very refreshing honesty.

As for songs about rock and roll, I'll just leave this here.
posted by TedW at 5:30 AM on September 21, 2016


BTW, I loved the whole damn Mr Mister album.

I somehow never heard of them until the chorus of this Bleu song.
posted by thelonius at 5:31 AM on September 21, 2016


I challenge anyone to find an older song about rock and roll than this one. It doesn't particularly rock, though.


As for eighties style, I always think of these guys as the zenith (or nadir, take your pick).
posted by TedW at 5:39 AM on September 21, 2016


First of all, Balin's "Hearts" is a good song.

It is, but you must admit that it is some distance out on the Air Supply axis.
posted by thelonius at 5:43 AM on September 21, 2016


I'm at a loss as to why anyone would want to listen to this stuff all day every day.

My guess is that they're in their forties and fifties and spent the 80s doing things that were a lot more fun than what they now use the radio to distract them from all day.

The Union Jack station will be for people in the same position who want to avoid tracks like We Built This City on Rock and Roll by Starship.

I, personally, have been known to use Thomas Dolby's The Flat Earth and Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen for those distractive purposes. But there was a point around 1986 where I just gave up and spent most of the rest of the decade listening to 70s West Coast Rock (Joni, Steely, that sort of thing), and progressive rock until Three Feet High and Rising came out. Most of pop music during that period turned into this fizzing, clanking thing that was a bit like painting everything in day-glo colours and overdosing on bad speed.

That said I've had the Starship song running through my head since first reading this thread yesterday. So as a piece of pop music, it can be said to work. In the same way that crack cocaine can be said to work.

I finally had to banish it by imagining what Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah would sound like done in the style of Lily the Pink by The Scaffold. It would sound as bonkers as you'd expect.
posted by Grangousier at 5:55 AM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


In my neck of the woods, the Top 40 radio station (98 PXY!) replaced the DJ section with one of its local DJs talking about PXY and it was the best station ever or something like that. Did anyone else's station do that?
posted by Lucinda at 5:56 AM on September 21, 2016


> BTW, I loved the whole damn Mr Mister album.

The only two tapes I ever remember my uncle having in the car he had throughout the '80s were Mr. Mister's Welcome To The Real World and Nightflight to Venus by Boney M. I don't remember him having any music at home, so that may have been the sum total of his collection.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:57 AM on September 21, 2016


Oh, and the only way I could live with the at-one-time-ubiquitous Foreigner song was imagine it was a paen to farmyard sexuality called I've Been Waiting for a Girl-like Ewe.
posted by Grangousier at 5:57 AM on September 21, 2016 [8 favorites]


Laugh all you want, kids, soon 90s music will be the oldies station.

Actually the crowning sin of 80s (well, all) oldies stations is not their existence but the fact that they don't play the more interesting stuff of that decade. It's the same 30 songs in rotation. You would think that if your station only did one thing, they could do some more obscure songs but nope.

As an antidote to the awfulness of WBTC and because someone mentioned Nik Kershaw, here's a song a I never hear on 80s stations even when I do listen. But I loved it when it came out, the song and the video.

Online, KROQ is not too bad as an 80s retro station.
posted by emjaybee at 6:39 AM on September 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


Who are these people who remember their school days fondly well into middle age? Was that really the peak of their lives?

I'm guessing that the best bit for a lot of people was college, when you didn't have much responsibility and you had as much access to hedonism as you wanted. But the early teenage years was when you had even less responsibility - you certainly didn't have to keep up the mortgage and the payments on the car, and no children were relying on you for food and clothing. In addition, your own parents were both alive and compos mentis. Yet, you had some of the hedonism and it was similar enough to adulthood that you can retreat into it without being too embarrassed. And it was when you had an ambition that was approaching realistic and not yet crushed by reality.

Also, the school stuff is what most people have in common, unless they're posh enough to go to public school or raised by wolves. And neither of those demographics are in the station's target audience.

These are odd things. When I was young (in the early 80s) there were lots of revival movements - ska and mod the most famous. Most of those bands played the music that their teenage elder siblings had listened to when they were very small. Something has to be happening there, surely.

The ear worm is back, but now it's informing me that "[Stuart] Maconie plays the mango".
posted by Grangousier at 6:50 AM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Actually the crowning sin of 80s (well, all) oldies stations is not their existence but the fact that they don't play the more interesting stuff of that decade. It's the same 30 songs in rotation. You would think that if your station only did one thing, they could do some more obscure songs but nope.


This is just Classic Rock formatting, applied to a different genre. When's the last time you heard "Tumbling Dice" or "Miss You" on a classic rock radio station? They play the 5, at most, biggest hits of any band.
posted by thelonius at 6:56 AM on September 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


I thought it was 'And Tony plays the mango' which makes about as much sense.
posted by h00py at 6:58 AM on September 21, 2016


winterhill: "Frankly, if I never remembered my school years again I'd not miss those memories. Who are these people who remember their school days fondly well into middle age? Was that really the peak of their lives?"

Hi, nice to meet you! I remember my school days fondly well into middle age! It wasn't the peak of my life, but it was a good time. Also, elementary school was a good time, as were parts of college, late twenties and early 30s, late 30s and now. Could probably have done without junior high school and my middle 30s, though.

So I have fond memories of 80s music because I have fond memories of the 80s (when I was in elementary school). Once I was in high school and college I wasn't exposed to top 40 radio so much, so while I have fond memories of those times, I don't associate 90s pop with my fond memories. Then, at a certain age, my fond memories don't link music at all, pop or otherwise. I can listen to music I loved when I was in my late 20s, and it's nice music, and I enjoyed my late 20s, but the music isn't nostalgic, it's just good music. It doesn't conjure up specific moods and smells and feelings like music from elementary school does.

I don't think having fond memories of ones life is even remotely creepy. I find it sad that I don't have fond memories of junior high, and when I hear about other folks not having fond memories of parts of their life, because they went through hard times, I also find that sad. I don't think "that's not sad, it's normal, and everybody else is creepy."
posted by Bugbread at 7:04 AM on September 21, 2016


I mean, Don't Forget Me When I'm Gone by Glass Tiger is a pretty corny, vapid song too, but nobody really remembers it

I wish it was forgotten and buried, but I have to hear it every damn day at work on the classic shlock station. They never play We Built This City though, so there's that.
posted by rodlymight at 7:09 AM on September 21, 2016


I wish it was forgotten and buried, but I have to hear it every damn day at work on the classic shlock station. They never play We Built This City though, so there's that.

The good thing about living in Canada is that Canadian content rules mean that we don't hear 80's schlock rock like "We Built This City" much. That bad thing about living in Canada is that Canadian content rules mean we get the 80's schlock rock from Canadian bands like Glass Tiger.
posted by nubs at 7:17 AM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm at a loss as to why anyone would want to listen to this stuff all day every day.

I have no idea how old you are, person who wrote this sentence, but this is as fine a display of get-off-my-lawn-ism as anyone could wish for. "Rap music! More like cRap music. am I right?"

I'm betting the answer here is: 1) many people don't and 2) some people do because music isn't an important part of their lives and what the hell they've heard it before and it's pleasant enough to drive to.

If I still had access to it, I'd post my quote about how rock and roll can 'heal the most wounded and desperate among us'. It's not just 'escapism'.

Your rock and roll theologies aside, my point wasn't that "escapism" is bad. It isn't at all. It's fun! My point was that it's pretty self-indulgent or self-aggrandizing, or maybe just deeply cynical, for a person who's made a career as a pop musician to dismiss a pop song as "vacuous escapism." Escapism? You're soaking in it.

I guess the key question here, which Tannenbaum didn't even address, and which hasn't really been answered here is "Given that "We Built This City" (however it fares in comparison to other pop songs) is far from being the worst Starship song—and, in fact, probably the best—why is it so disliked?
posted by octobersurprise at 7:21 AM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Finally, everything that was cheesy and crappy about the 80s, all that bloated, glossy overproduction and those digital synth presets and digital reverbs everywhere, and the lack of restraint that made Kurt Cobain throw the lighted match, is being recognised as being as classic as big ol' modular synths and 1960s guitars and stuff. It only took the usual 2-3 decades for this to happen.

I recently listened to the new Ladyhawke album, and it captures that sort of circa-1988 radio-pop zeitgeist brilliantly, updating it for today; one could almost say it's Taylor Dayne meets Taylor Swift.
posted by acb at 7:25 AM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Taylor Dayne meets Taylor Swift

Which raises an important question: when does slickly-produced synth-dance-pop - very specifically, the post-disco-pre-techno offerings of Taylor Dayne, Bananarama, Rick Astley, etc - get an unironic revival from some fledgling artist or group? I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a HUGE soft spot for that stuff.
posted by tantrumthecat at 7:48 AM on September 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


thelonius: "This is just Classic Rock formatting, applied to a different genre. When's the last time you heard "Tumbling Dice" or "Miss You" on a classic rock radio station? They play the 5, at most, biggest hits of any band."

This is why SiriusXM pleases me. I mean, they *do* play the biggest hits, too, but they surprise you sometimes. I heard "Pure" by the Lightning Seeds on there yesterday, which I don't think I'd even thought of in 20 years.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:54 AM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


because someone mentioned Nik Kershaw, here's a song a I never hear on 80s stations even when I do listen

I hear "Wouldn't It Be Good" on SiriusXM's 80's on 8/First Wave channels not infrequently. They're adept at playing a broad sampling of music from the period. You probably won't hear The Minnie Pops or Crispy Ambulance, say, but it's good for a variety of MTV/chart music/college rock radio songs.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:55 AM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


The video of Wouldn't It Be Good was used for filling space between programmes on an Australian commercial TV station in the mid-80s (presumably there were legal limits on the maximum number of ads that could be shown then). I remember seeing it many times, and being drawn into the story of the video's protagonist, the moody outsider building a fantastic machine to realise his denied dreams. (Those denied dreams presumably consisted of the love of some girl, but being prepubescent at the time, I didn't consider that.)

Later I discovered that Nik Kershaw also wrote Chesney Hawkes' The One And Only (as featured in Duncan Jones' Moon).
posted by acb at 7:58 AM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


octobersurprise: "I guess the key question here, which Tannenbaum didn't even address, and which hasn't really been answered here is "Given that "We Built This City" (however it fares in comparison to other pop songs) is far from being the worst Starship song—and, in fact, probably the best—why is it so disliked?"

I think the answer is that it was played a lot a lot a lot. That, combined with it's...insistent...nature means that it earworms you in an unpleasant way.

"Sara" is a terrible song, too, but more *forgettable.*
posted by Chrysostom at 8:03 AM on September 21, 2016


someone mentioned Nik Kershaw, here's a song I never hear on 80s stations even when I do listen

Oh, I love that song, never knew who did it or what it was called.

You need to listen to more BOB FM. You really don't, actually.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:35 AM on September 21, 2016


To go from Woodstock to throwaway synth pop wasn't a trajectory that made sense to most of their fans.

Lots of dirty grubby faith-shattering blame to go around in the 1980s. Scores of idealistic acts from the sixties and seventies, from George Harrison to Crosby Stills and Nash and even Aretha Franklin, figured out where the money was and recorded "throwaway synth pop." The remaining Beatles sold their souls to Nike. Marvin Gaye's last album was awash in Fender Rhodes. Starship wasn't alone in going for the money, that's for sure. Screw them for wanting to make a killing!

I mean, if this music had a physical body, it would be Donald Trump, endlessly doing shitty things then complaining about people who do those same shitty things.

I can think of at least a dozen songs from that era or even from that year that I would identify as the shitty musical incarnation of Trump before I'd identify "We Built This City."
posted by blucevalo at 9:33 AM on September 21, 2016


is there any song which is self referentially about "rock n roll" that isn't objectively terrible?

Yes, though technically it might be more of a critique.
posted by remembrancer at 9:37 AM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


the moody outsider building a fantastic machine to realise his denied dreams

See, I thought he was an alien trying to get home. But hey, music videos mean what you want them to.
posted by emjaybee at 9:37 AM on September 21, 2016


The remaining Beatles sold their souls to Nike.

Nike paid Capitol Records and Michael Jackson for the right to use a Beatles song in an ad. The three remaining Beatles sued to block this. Nike's usage was not with the permission of the Beatles, and as part of the suit's settlement, they stopped using it.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:39 AM on September 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


So Peter Wolf produced We Built This City and Everybody Have Fun Tonight? I wonder how much else of the mid-to-late-80s' top-40 soundscape he is responsible for.
posted by acb at 9:59 AM on September 21, 2016


Marvin Gaye's last album was awash in Fender Rhodes

Not to mention a TR-808.
posted by acb at 10:00 AM on September 21, 2016


I guess the key question here, which Tannenbaum didn't even address, and which hasn't really been answered here is "Given that "We Built This City" (however it fares in comparison to other pop songs) is far from being the worst Starship song—and, in fact, probably the best—why is it so disliked?

I imagine it's a sense of betrayal. It's sort of like why people in the UK hate the Lib Dems more than the Tories; you expect the Tories to be bastards, but when the Lib Dems raise university fees, it's a double sting. Or in this case, Jefferson Starship were a relic of the 1960s; they were around in 1967, the point Rockism would have was the high-water mark of Authentic Rock. Now to see them go into the studio, pick up the latest digital synthesisers and make some high-gloss MTV-era video-pop would sting like betrayal, in the way that seeing, say, Rick Astley do the same wouldn't do.

(The fact that they're professional musicians still working in the mid-80s doesn't enter into it; their public image is as a symbol of The Sixeventies, the era of Peace and Love and Really Good Weed and their fans' nostalgically recalled youth, and them abandoning that violates the implicit canon, causing much anguish; in some ways, it's as if J.K. Rowling paired Harry up with Hermione or something.)
posted by acb at 10:11 AM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


A good song rock song about rock n' roll, you say? How about The King?
posted by vibrotronica at 10:50 AM on September 21, 2016


acb: “So Peter Wolf produced We Built This City and Everybody Have Fun Tonight? I wonder how much else of the mid-to-late-80s' top-40 soundscape he is responsible for.”

Well, it's interesting looking at his Wikipedia page; this list is sort of a vague list to start with on his production credits, I guess, and has some interesting things on it. He appears to have sort of drifted along into CCM in the mid-90s, producing stuff for Contemporary Christian Music stalwarts like 4Him and Bryan Duncan. But what really surprised me was finding out he was Frank Zappa's keyboard player for a while in the late 70s and early 80s, and played the excellently cheesy keyboards on "Joe's Garage," "Tinsel Town Rebellion," and Frank's magnum opus about the American Dream, "Bobby Brown Goes Down."
posted by koeselitz at 11:45 AM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


The song starts with a bass solo and has a weather report in the middle of it. That's automatically awesome. Also it was playing while I made out with my first girlfriend, who was wearing a Swatch branded off-the-shoulders sweatshirt. That's as 80s as it gets.
posted by mattholomew at 11:53 AM on September 21, 2016 [6 favorites]


sort of drifted along into CCM

and Frank's magnum opus about the American Dream, "Bobby Brown Goes Down"

Uh-huh, I see what you did there.
posted by pianoblack at 12:46 PM on September 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


The remaining Beatles sold their souls to Nike.

Nike paid Capitol Records and Michael Jackson for the right to use a Beatles song in an ad. The three remaining Beatles sued to block this. Nike's usage was not with the permission of the Beatles, and as part of the suit's settlement, they stopped using it.


This. I remember what a shitstorm that Nike ad caused: most people didn't understand how the Beatles didn't by default own the rights to their own songs, and I'm sure if social media had existed back then, there'd have been a BARRAGE of thinkpieces about the evil, money-grubbing Beatles and the Death Knell Of The Hippie Dream, followed by a second barrage of Welp, You Can Blame MJ For This Mess counter-thinkpieces.

I've been following this thread with real admiration for how people have been able to articulate why this song still polarizes people thirty years later. I keep trying and failing. I should mention that it was one of the first vinyl singles that I ever paid out-of-pocket for, but I hadn't thought of much it since. (I was eleven.) I was initially very surprised when The Internet ™ declared it Worst Song Ever a few years back.
posted by tantrumthecat at 12:48 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


I heard the Beatles spilled warm coffee on this woman's lap and she sued them for a billion dollars.
posted by Bugbread at 2:53 PM on September 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is" was a hit in the same year. Starship didn't even get close to sucking as bad as Foreigner.
posted by spitbull at 3:12 PM on September 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


Grace Slick's excuse for this song -- that she was sober -- is my favorite excuse ever. I totally understand, and am stealing it for all my bad taste disasters.
posted by djinn dandy at 3:46 PM on September 21, 2016 [6 favorites]


I have an abiding love for WBTC, but really just came here to say that the author of the article was the officiant at my second wedding several years ago. So, I'm, like, two degrees of separation from the worst song in the history of music.
posted by hanov3r at 4:15 PM on September 21, 2016


WBTC sounds like a number from a cheesy musical, but I'm not sure that's the insult it used to be. In a few years it will be a classic.
posted by bongo_x at 4:22 PM on September 21, 2016


But what really surprised me was finding out he was Frank Zappa's keyboard player for a while in the late 70s and early 80s

I think he's in the "Baby Snakes" film which is, I guess, live concert footage from 1978 plus claymation and some limo/backstage/editing footage. Anyway Adrian Belew is there!
posted by thelonius at 4:25 PM on September 21, 2016


Someone touched on this before, but part of the problem was the phrase "rock and roll" itself. In the mid-80s nobody really said "rock and roll". It was "rock". So at the point where you are singing "Rock! And! Rolllll!" you are already sounding ridiculous. It would be like someone in the late 90s talking about how they listen to "rap" (instead of "hip-hop") or someone in the early 90s calling Metallica "heavy metal" (instead of "metal").
posted by Bugbread at 4:33 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


recently, at an Oyster Festival in Connecticut, guess who played for free?

Blue Oyster Cult. That would've been cool to witness, but I didn't find out till too late.
posted by jonmc at 4:38 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Online, KROQ is not too bad as an 80s retro station.
Hoo boy... memory flogger... which is probably why I've consciously forgotten about "KROQ2" (feed #1 is the 'current format'). Part of my 'not my day job' semi-career in radio in L.A. got me writing and voicing "bits" for the DJs at KROQ (there were many hangers-on like me before Jimmy Kimmel ruined it for everybody) and I got a serious inside look at a semi-unique radio format. They actually started calling themselves "The ROQ of the '80s" in 1977, positioning themselves as 'the NEXT big thing'; at first they were focusing on new local California acts, ranging from early Van Halen to Oingo Boingo and Sparks. But then they brought in Rodney Bingenheimer, who was running a local club focused on Punk and Post-Punk, to do a Sunday Night show (HE STILL IS), and the Evil Genius Programmer Ric (no k, please) Carroll came up with a weird mix of almost-mainstream (Talking Heads and Elvis Costello) and way-out-there (bye bye Van Halen, more more Oingo Boingo and Sparks... also Devo and B-52s), and increasing percentages of whatever was Brit Pop at the moment (A Flock of Seagulls, Depeche Mode, Pretenders, Duran Duran, Blancmange - remember them?). With an underpaid DJ staff with short airshifts (and the hangers-on like me... I got in sending them a cassette of me doing a mediocre Rod Serling impression/Twilight Zone bit). When the Olympics came to L.A., the DJ on duty during the Opening Ceremonies dropped all the music for two hours while an improvised improv group (7 guys with microphones, including me) provided "alternative coverage" making fun of the Parade of Nations and finishing by renaming Olympian Rafer Johnson "Reefer" as he lit a giant bong in the L.A. Coliseum (sadly, not my joke).

Anyway, thanks to KROQ, the '80s were a lot less Michael Jackson, Journey, Heavy Metal and embryonic Hip Hop, and a lot more Men Without Hats, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Madness... yeah, we ska'd.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:28 PM on September 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


This. I remember what a shitstorm that Nike ad caused: most people didn't understand how the Beatles didn't by default own the rights to their own songs, and I'm sure if social media had existed back then, there'd have been a BARRAGE of thinkpieces about the evil, money-grubbing Beatles and the Death Knell Of The Hippie Dream, followed by a second barrage of Welp, You Can Blame MJ For This Mess counter-thinkpieces.


In one of the Dante's Inferno adaptations I had to write as a teenager, I had Paul McCartney in Hell with jeweled beetles burrowing into his skin for the 'sin' of selling the Beatles' song rights to the 'pale demon' (I didn't think he was dead - in the Inferno you can lose your soul and still be alive).

I still cringe at that, especially since my friend has played me some of Paul's better music.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 5:34 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Who are these people who remember their school days fondly well into middle age? Was that really the peak of their lives?

I think for a lot of people, something kind of crucial to what makes us, us, is kind of set around early high school. I've known a lot of people whose sexual tastes are very informed by what impressed them around the time they became sexually aware, and I think other tastes and qualities, too. Like many people, my teen years were miserable: I was deeply unhappy, trapped in a pretty horrible and frightening home, always the odd one out who moved schools too much at school, and yet I look back at fourteen year old me, who had the time and privacy at least to drift in a hazy, sort of medieval-Lite fantasy world, a mash up of The Riddle, Dune, The Prince in Waiting, and the Viroconium stories with almost longing. I just don't have the time to immerse myself in that place anymore, and little snatches of it granted by a three minute pop song are like a little waft of spring at the end of winter. Maybe it's like that for other people. Their stories are different, they listened to different music, had different internal narratives where they made sense, and maybe listening to silly old songs brings that back for them, too.
posted by glitter at 8:07 PM on September 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


In the mid-80s nobody really said "rock and roll".

They shout 'rock and roll' at each other as a kind of 'high five' thing in Spinal Tap - especially the scene where they can't find their way to the stage. I've been in a few bands that do it as a homage to that.
posted by Coda Tronca at 3:05 AM on September 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


So after my light joshing of this song, it turns out this week "We Built This City" was on my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist (which is built based on your personal listening history and which I've previously described as "creepily accurate"), so I guess the joke is algorithmically on me.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 5:45 AM on September 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Tannenbaum's only interested in pinning Worst. Song. Ever. on "We Built This City," so it wasn't until I was playing Rhinestone Cowboy last night that it hit me that Dennis Lambert (and Brian Potter) also produced and wrote most of that record, too. And among others, Lambert also wrote or co-wrote "Nightshift" for The Commodores, "Baby Come Back" for Player, several early albums for Tavares, "Are You Man Enough" and "Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got)" for The Four Tops, "Don't Pull Your Love" for Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds, and "One Tin Soldier" originally for Original Caste, later made famous by Coven.

That makes me appreciate Lambert's quote even more: "It's part of the price you pay for making hit records. Can't please everybody. I'm still here; Blender's not."
posted by octobersurprise at 6:02 AM on September 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


I read the article but didn't listen when this was posted the other day. I just listened right now, for the first time in probably 15 years, and you know what? This is a fucking great song. Haters to the left.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:15 PM on September 22, 2016 [5 favorites]


I didn't like it before everyone hated it.

And I cannot wait to get home and watch all y'all's video links.
posted by JawnBigboote at 12:39 PM on September 22, 2016


Apropos of Pete Sears, Terry Dolan's (of Terry and The Pirates) lost debut record, featuring Sears, is getting a release by High Moon Records in November, 43 years after its completion. Apropos of Bay Area rock, the record also features Neal Schon*, who would go on to co-found Journey.

(*How in hell did I miss the pay-per-view broadcast of Neal's marriage to his fifth wife, White House gate-crasher, Michaele Salahi, in December 2013? I must've been washing my hair or something that night.)
posted by octobersurprise at 6:35 AM on September 23, 2016


The Neal Schon PPV marriage was right in the middle of all the documentary hype. I think he probably thought it would be the cherry on top of that arc but it was really just the fudge at the bottom. He seems like a nice enough guy in the doc, but winding up with Salahi is a crackup.
posted by rhizome at 8:11 PM on September 24, 2016


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