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"We Built This City": All-Time Great Song (1 Viewer)

We Built This City

  • All-Time Great Song

    Votes: 7 5.4%

  • Great Song For Its 1980's Time

    Votes: 7 5.4%

  • Secretly/Underrated Great (You Don't Want To Admit You Think It Is Great)

    Votes: 7 5.4%

  • Okay

    Votes: 12 9.2%

  • It Represents What Was Awful About 1980's Music

    Votes: 41 31.5%

  • It Represents The Good Spirit of 1980's Music

    Votes: 17 13.1%

  • Rolling Stone Magazine Voted It Worst Song Of 1980's (I Agree)

    Votes: 39 30.0%
  • Total voters
    130
Encyclopedia Brown

Encyclopedia Brown

Footballguy
Is this an all-time song? Everyone I know, regardless of age, can recite all the lyrics: Marconi plays the mamba.

Grace Slick was almost fifty-years old when this song came out, a fact that bewildered those of us who were in high school at the time. We thought that was ancient, like from the Stone Age.

The video elevates the song. Abe Lincoln in the the Lincoln Memorial standing up and belting out the chorus is pretty cool. 

The #1 Song for the last two weeks of November of 1985. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1b8AhIsSYQ

 
I can appreciate the positive and upbeat attitude of the song, but the lyrics are horrible.  Definitely shouldn't be considered an all-time great song.

 
If they you listened to the radio or watched MTV in 1985, there was no way to avoid this song. It is what I call annoyingly catchy.  There is just so much wrong with it, but there is a catchiness to it that you sometimes can't help getting drawn to.  

 
Ghost Rider said:
If they you listened to the radio or watched MTV in 1985, there was no way to avoid this song. It is what I call annoyingly catchy.  There is just so much wrong with it, but there is a catchiness to it that you sometimes can't help getting drawn to.  
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This is also the first song that I can recall where radio stations were able to localize it. There was a part where our local top 40 stations inserted some blurbs about Minneapolis and their station’s name. This is a thing I’ve heard in a handful of hip hop and pop songs since then.

 
Ditkaless Wonders said:
Jefferson Starship sucked ###.
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Nah, they had their high points, too -- though with pretty different lineups (e.g. "Miracles", "Jane").

Slagging on Starship (after they dropped the "Jefferson") makes some more sense, though I am a sucker for Mickey Thomas' vox. One of the biggest differences between talent and material quality in rock history.

 
Jobber said:
This is also the first song that I can recall where radio stations were able to localize it. There was a part where our local top 40 stations inserted some blurbs about Minneapolis and their station’s name. This is a thing I’ve heard in a handful of hip hop and pop songs since then.
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Radio stations did it with the Pointer Sisters' "Fire". inserting their call letters in the place of "radio", in 1979

 
Jobber said:
This is also the first song that I can recall where radio stations were able to localize it. There was a part where our local top 40 stations inserted some blurbs about Minneapolis and their station’s name. This is a thing I’ve heard in a handful of hip hop and pop songs since then.
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The first I can recall is this one:  My Town

I am reasonably sure the record company promoted it to radio stations with the intention of them localizing it.

Edit: or what Uruk said.

 
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Doug B said:
though I am a sucker for Mickey Thomas' vox. One of the biggest differences between talent and material quality in rock history.
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He had a great voice. He and Grace really melded, though it was not good material. 

Urban legend has it that he got the utter crap beaten out of him after a gig by a fellow band member and never quite recovered. 

 
Encyclopedia Brown said:
Urban legend has it that he got the utter crap beaten out of him after a gig by a fellow band member and never quite recovered. 
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It's no legend ... and it wan't just a fellow band member -- it was a fellow band member that happened to be a good friend of Thomas's from way back: drummer Donny Baldwin. Story here.

 
It's better than every (Steve Perry) Journey song ever released for starters.  It has a great build up.  It's on par with many of Hughy Lewis and the News best tunes imo.

It was overplayed back then FOR SURE.

 
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I like 80's songs, but not that one.  I have a hard time believing starship and Jefferson airplane were related in any way.  

 
Ilov80s said:
It's a song that is so bad that it's great. 
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This is almost true.  It was only tolerable because you could substitute "we drank Fall City and Rock n Roll" for the gawd awful lyrics.  

 
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Very schlocky. The combo of bad song meets 1000's of spins makes it one of the worst offenses of the 80s. There are worse 80s songs but I might hate listening to this one more than few others. 

 
"We Built This City" didn't suck because the Airplane sold out. It sucked because it's a horrible song - the melody would make a 3rd grader puke and the lyric is garbage; if the playing was better, that might be off-set somewhat, but it wasn't.

By the way, the original Airplane wasn't all that either. So let's not pretend this was some kind of Great Demise. They stunk when they were at their best. Most of the Haight bands did - sloppy arrangements, couldn't play, and were horrible live. Santana propped that whole scene up. Quicksilver, too, if they hadn't kept imploding.

 
Uruk-Hai said:
By the way, the original Airplane wasn't all that either. So let's not pretend this was some kind of Great Demise. They stunk when they were at their best. Most of the Haight bands did - sloppy arrangements, couldn't play, and were horrible live. Santana propped that whole scene up. Quicksilver, too, if they hadn't kept imploding.
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I kinda agree with this. Sure, White Rabbit is a good song and they had a few other quality tunes, but they definitely always struck me as a band that was more hype than good music.  Being around in the late 60's sure helped, too, as their is a mystique about that time period in music that results in a lot of acts from then being vasty overrated. 

 
Uruk-Hai said:
"We Built This City" didn't suck because the Airplane sold out. It sucked because it's a horrible song - the melody would make a 3rd grader puke and the lyric is garbage; if the playing was better, that might be off-set somewhat, but it wasn't.

By the way, the original Airplane wasn't all that either. So let's not pretend this was some kind of Great Demise. They stunk when they were at their best. Most of the Haight bands did - sloppy arrangements, couldn't play, and were horrible live. Santana propped that whole scene up. Quicksilver, too, if they hadn't kept imploding.
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Most of the Haight sucked. A definite case where the myth around it far surpassed the reality 

 
Uruk-Hai said:
By the way, the original Airplane wasn't all that either. So let's not pretend this was some kind of Great Demise. They stunk when they were at their best. Most of the Haight bands did - sloppy arrangements, couldn't play, and were horrible live. Santana propped that whole scene up. Quicksilver, too, if they hadn't kept imploding.
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The Airplane benefited tremendously from being in the right place at the right time but "stunk" is kind of strong.  Jack Casady and Jorma could play and they had some great songs interspersed with a lot of silly hippie ####.  Moby Grape was a great SF band for a brief period.

LA can have Starship if they want them.

 
Eephus said:
The Airplane benefited tremendously from being in the right place at the right time but "stunk" is kind of strong.  Jack Casady and Jorma could play and they had some great songs interspersed with a lot of silly hippie ####.  Moby Grape was a great SF band for a brief period.

LA can have Starship if they want them.
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A wee bit hyperbole on my part :lol:  But most of those bands weren't good. They got blown off the stage at Monterrey by acts from outside. 

Guess what else started in SF in 1967?

Related to the above question: guess who also took it upon themselves to craft rock history?

 
Eephus said:
The Airplane benefited tremendously from being in the right place at the right time but "stunk" is kind of strong.  Jack Casady and Jorma could play and they had some great songs interspersed with a lot of silly hippie ####.  Moby Grape was a great SF band for a brief period.

LA can have Starship if they want them.
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'70s electric Hot Tuna > Jefferson Airplane

 
Uruk-Hai said:
A wee bit hyperbole on my part :lol:  But most of those bands weren't good. They got blown off the stage at Monterrey by acts from outside. 

Guess what else started in SF in 1967?

Related to the above question: guess who also took it upon themselves to craft rock history?
Click to expand...
Rice-a-roni?

 
Uruk-Hai said:
"We Built This City" didn't suck because the Airplane sold out. It sucked because it's a horrible song - the melody would make a 3rd grader puke and the lyric is garbage; if the playing was better, that might be off-set somewhat, but it wasn't.

By the way, the original Airplane wasn't all that either. So let's not pretend this was some kind of Great Demise. They stunk when they were at their best. Most of the Haight bands did - sloppy arrangements, couldn't play, and were horrible live. Santana propped that whole scene up. Quicksilver, too, if they hadn't kept imploding.
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:goodposting:

The two best songs by Jefferson Airplane ("Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit") were recycled songs by Grace Slick's previous band, The Great Society.

Without those two songs, they were a poor man's Big Brother & The Holding Company.

 
Encyclopedia Brown said:
Is this an all-time song? Everyone I know, regardless of age, can recite all the lyrics: Marconi plays the mamba.

Grace Slick was almost fifty-years old when this song came out, a fact that bewildered those of us who were in high school at the time. We thought that was ancient, like from the Stone Age.

The video elevates the song. Abe Lincoln in the the Lincoln Memorial standing up and belting out the chorus is pretty cool. 

The #1 Song for the last two weeks of November of 1985. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1b8AhIsSYQ
Click to expand...
Right up there with Monster Mash and Convoy imo. 

 
Jobber said:
When the song was out, I recall being intrigued that this was the same band (well, at least some in the band) that was around during the Vietnam era and performed White Rabbit.
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This is why I voted worst of the 80s - though if really pushed, there were plenty more that were worse.  It gets the worse vote because it represents what had become of a ground-breaking band when the remaining members decided to sell out.  

#sad 

 
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