Songoftheday 6/18/14 - Knee deep in the hoopla sinking in your fight, too many runaways eating up the night...

Starship - "We Built This City"
from the album Knee Deep In The Hoopla (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15

Today's song of the day comes from the remnants of what was the premier psychedelic rock back from San Francisco, Jefferson Airplane, who came together in the mid-60s and produced a line a classic albums and singles including "White Rabbit" and "Somebody To Love", however after a plethora of member changes the "Airplane" dissolved in 1973. The following year guitarist Paul Kantner and vocalists Grace Slick and Marty Balin reinvented the band as Jefferson Starship, was more spacey and mainstream-oriented that their JA work, and the new group scored another pair of top-10 hits with "Miracles" and "Count On Me". However, troubles within Jefferson Starship rose again, with Slick getting booted and Balin exiting for a solo career, leaving them in need of a new lead singer.

In comes Mickey Thomas, a high-pitched vocal powerhouse previously with Elvin Bishop's band, who even further pushed the group into pop music territory. They would score moderate-sized hits, especially after Slick rejoined the group, up to 1984's Nuclear Furniture album, which had given them a top-40 pop hit with "No Way Out". At this point Kantner left, and with no original Jefferson Airplane members left in the group, forced them to drop the "Jefferson" from the "Starship". So the new "Starship" lineup would be Grace Slick and Mickey Thomas along with JS alums Pete Sears and Craig Chaquico and drummer Donny Baldwin,who signed on in the Nuclear Furniture days (keyboardist David Freiberg left in frustration in be shut out by producer Peter Wolf on the synth work).

What came of all this was a studio project transformation in the sorts that Chicago went through earlier in the decade - transforming them into a pure pop confection with only the sight and sound of Slick tenuously linking them to their Haight-Ashbury roots. The first single under the Starship moniker was "We Built This City", more of a commercial jingle than a song, with puerile lyrics seemingly test-marketed to the square youth of 1985, written by psuedo-Christian songwriter Richard Page along with producers Peter Wolf (not the J Geils one) and Dennis Lambert with none other than Bernie Taupin, who's nonsensical lyrical style shows through without Elton John's way with a melody to distract...

"We Built This City" outdid its wildest aspirations, climbing all the way to #1 (something neither of the Jefferson bands could do) in November of 1985. The record also topped the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard magazine, as well as sneaking on to the adult contemporary list at #37. Internationally, the single was a huge success, reaching #1 in both Canada and Australia, and going top-ten in Germany, Ireland, Sweden, and Switzerland. Only in the UK did there be some sense of decency, stopping the record short at #12 (though it would re-enter the top-40 this year due to exposure from an cell phone advertisement).

But in my ears this song was utter poison, the epitome of corporate marketing seeping into rock and roll's art, and due to the fact that not only was it a bad song that sounded shitty, it was performed by a band with actual prior cred, even in the more mainstream years ("Jane" and "Find Your Way Back" rocked). For that combo of reasons I've always considered "We Built This City" to be the "worse hit song ever", a feeling redeemed when both Blender and Rolling Stone magazines crowned it as such in different eras. They may have continued down this path of schlock with "Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now" and "It's Not Over", but nothing compares to the level of cheese that is in this cracker.

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Here's Starship succumbing to the youth of America in 1986 with the song (I couldn't imagine them being able to do that today with the ageism prevalent)...