"We Built This City" is the debut single by American rock band Starship, from their 1985 debut album Knee Deep in the Hoopla. It was written by English musicians Martin Page and Bernie Taupin, who were both living in Los Angeles at the time, and was originally intended as a lament against the closure of many of that city's live music clubs.
The song peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Outside the United States, "We Built This City" topped the charts in Australia and Canada, peaked inside the Top 10 of the charts in Germany, the Republic of Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland, the Top 20 on the charts in Belgium, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and the Top 30 of the charts in Austria and the Netherlands.
The song has gained significant scorn, both for the inscrutability of its lyrics (notably the line "Marconi plays the mamba"), and for the contrast between the song's anti-corporate message and its polished, "corporate rock" sound. It topped a 2011 Rolling Stone poll of worst songs of the 1980s by a wide margin, and the magazines Blender and GQ both called it the worst song of all time.
The album's title, Knee Deep in the Hoopla, is taken from a lyric in the first verse of this song.[3]
Content and production
Song co-writers Martin Page and Bernie Taupin have stated that the song is about the decline of live-performance clubs in Los Angeles during the 1980s.[4][5][6] In 2013, Taupin told Rolling Stone that the "original song was a very dark kind of mid-tempo song ... about how club life in L.A. was being killed off and live acts had no place to go ... A guy called Peter Wolf [the album's producer] ... got ahold of the demo and totally changed it. He jerry-rigged it into the pop hit it was".[5] In an interview with Songfacts, Page added that the "demo was quite high-energy techno, because that was the sound of the band I was in ... it was a little more edgy. And I'm very pleased with what Starship did with it, because they made it a universally appealing song".[6]
The lyrics seem to be a plea to corporate interests who are closing down rock music clubs ("We just want to dance here/ Someone stole the stage") because the corporations are concerned only with profits and respectability ("Too many runaways"), and have forgotten the importance of rock music to the city ("Don't you remember? We built this city on rock and roll!").
Though "We Built This City" was originally written about Los Angeles, the Starship rendition references San Francisco (the hometown of both Starship and its predecessors, Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship). MTV executive and former DJ Les Garland provided the DJ voiceover during the song's bridge.[7] While "the city by the bay" refers to San Francisco, the other two phrases used by Garland—"the city that rocks" and "The City That Never Sleeps"—refer to Cleveland, Ohio, and New York City, respectively. To capitalize on this, several radio stations, with the help of jingle company JAM Creative Productions, customized the bridge when broadcasting the song by adding descriptions of their own local areas or inserting their idents.[8]
Billboard said that this "unusual rock 'n' roll anthem is as wise as it is rebellious".[9]Cash Box called it "an ear-catching tune" and described it as "dance rock with sharp hooks".[10]
Blender magazine's 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever
In 2004, the magazine Blender ran a feature on "The 50 Worst Songs Ever", in conjunction with the VH1 Special The 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs...Ever.[13] To qualify, songs had to be well-known hits; the list also avoided novelty songs, and multiple songs by the same artist.[14] "We Built This City" came in at #1. According to Blender editor Craig Marks, the choice was nearly unanimous among those who had been polled. Marks said of the song, "It purports to be anti-commercial but reeks of '80s corporate-rock commercialism. It's a real reflection of what practically killed rock music in the '80s."[15] He referred to the line of the song "Marconi plays the mamba", asking, "Who is Marconi? And what is the mamba? The mamba is the deadliest snake in the world, so he must have meant the mambo, but it sounds so much like 'mamba' that every lyric website writes it that way. It makes sense neither way."[14] The Blender feature also noted the irony of the song lamenting "they're always changing corporation names", given Starship's own frequent name changes.[13]
Asked about the listing, Mickey Thomas, one of the singers of Starship, said he was surprised at the ranking, but also "thrilled" because of the other high-profile groups on the list, saying, "I wish Blender had called us for a group shot. I'd love to have my picture taken with Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney."[14] (Wonder and McCartney were listed together at #10 for their 1982 duet "Ebony and Ivory".)[13] Asked again about the listing in 2010, Thomas said: "From what I heard, they got so much flak about it that they sort of retracted their statements in a way about the song. And not only that, but Blender's folded, and we're still here."[16]
Richmond Times-Dispatch music critic Melissa Ruggieri argued that "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" and "Sara" were Starship songs that were more suitable for the top of the list than "We Built This City", a song Ruggieri said "references Marconi, the father of the radio...inserted a cool snippet of DJ chatter from the band's beloved San Francisco...[and] found Grace Slick enunciating the phrase 'corporation games' with nutty abandon."[17]
Rolling Stone Top Ten Worst Songs of the 1980s
In 2011, a Rolling Stone magazine online readers poll named "We Built This City" the worst song of the 1980s. The song's winning margin was so large that the magazine reported it "could be the biggest blow-out victory in the history of the Rolling Stone Readers Poll".[18]
GQ Worst Song of All Time
In August 2016, GQ magazine declared this song as the worst of all time, referring to it as "the most detested song in human history".[4] The article covered Bernie Taupin and Martin Page's roles in writing an early version of the song, the song's development into its final version, its massive success and backlash, and Grace Slick's inconsistent statements about whether she liked the song.
In 2024, a commercial for the toilet paper brand Quilted Northern parodied the song as "We Quilt This City"[53][54][55][56]sung by a group of three ladies better known as "The Quilted Queens".
^ abGreene, Andy (September 26, 2013). "Bernie Taupin on Elton John's New LP: 'It's Kudos All Around'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved September 23, 2024. Anyway, there's an interesting anecdote about that song. I wrote it with Martin Page. The original song was a very dark kind of mid-tempo song, and it didn't have all this "We built this city!" 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. A guy called Peter Wolf – not J. Geils Peter Wolf, but a big-time pop guy and German record producer – got ahold of the demo and totally changed it. He jerry-rigged it into the pop hit it was. If you heard the original demo, you wouldn't even recognize the song.
^ abWiser, Carl (March 21, 2014). "Martin Page". Songfacts. Retrieved September 23, 2024. The demo was quite high-energy techno, because that was the sound of the band I was in. It was just very fortunate that I enjoyed writing to Bernie's lyrics straightaway. It was a magical experience ... I saw the words as almost like a rebellion lyric: it was like live music has been taken away from the city. So my demo, it was a little more edgy. And I'm very pleased with what Starship did with it, because they made it a universally appealing song.
