It’s hard to believe that 17 years and 6,348 songs into my daily blogging enterprise I had yet to feature the recording often called the worst song of all time.
Well, that oversight is remedied today, as Starship’s ‘We Built This City’ was the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 the week of December 23, 1985. Yes, today we’re throwing back to a time when ‘We Built This City’ was an unironic hit.
This was the first of three #1 hits for Starship, which is three more than the band had under its Jefferson Starship incarnation, and three more than it had as Jefferson Airplane. I guess the shift to synth-heavy pop rock in the mid-80s was the secret.
Starship, which featured none of the original Jefferson Airplane members, also handed over songwriting duties for most of its songs. This one was written by a quartet of writers-for-hire including Bernie Taupin, who likely doesn’t count it among his greatest accomplishments.
Taupin says the original song was slower and darker before being transformed into the shiny, soulless pop track we all know and hate.
Interestingly, though ‘We Built This City’ is best known as a famously bad song, the comments on its YouTube clip are mostly positive. I guess everything is loved by somebody.
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
Built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
[Verse 1]
Say you don’t know me
Or recognize my face
Say you don’t care who goes
To that kind of place
Knee deep in the hoopla
Sinking in your fight
Too many runaways
Eating up the night
[Pre-Chorus]
Marconi plays the mamba
Listen to the radio, don’t you remember?
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
[Chorus]
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
Built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
[Verse 2]
Someone always playing
Corporation games
Who cares? They’re always changing
Corporation names
We just want to dance here
Someone stole the stage
They call us irresponsible
Write us off the page
[Pre-Chorus]
Marconi plays the mamba
Listen to the radio, don’t you remember?
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
[Chorus]
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
Built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
[Bridge]
It’s just another Sunday
In a tired old street
Police have got the chokehold, oh
Then we just lost the beat
[Verse 3]
Who counts the money
Underneath the bar
Who rides the wrecking ball
Into our guitars
Don’t tell us you need us
‘Cause we’re the ship of fools
Looking for America
Coming through your schools
[Interlude]
I’m looking out over that Golden Gate bridge
On another gorgeous sunny Saturday
And I’m seeing that bumper to bumper traffic
Don’t you remember? (‘Member, ‘member)
It’s your favorite radio station
In your favorite radio city
The city by the bay, the city that rocks
The city that never sleeps
[Pre-Chorus]
Marconi plays the mamba
Listen to the radio, don’t you remember?
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
[Chorus]
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
Built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
[Chorus]
Built this city (ooh-hoo)
We built this city on rock and roll
Built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
[Outro]
We built, we built this city, yeah
(Built this city) We built, we built this city
We built, we built this city, yeah
(Built this city) We built, we built this city
We built, we built this city, yeah
(Built this city) We built, we built this city
We built, we built this city, yeah
(Built this city) We built, we built this city
We built, we built this city, yeah
Meet Me In Montauk 
I hated this song long before I knew it was universally considered one of the worst songs ever. At one point, I had a working theory that all songs that used the word “city” were awful. I can’t recall all the examples I had back when, but Glenn Frey’s “You Belong to the City” was definitely one of them.
Meanwhile, while it may be technically true that no original member of Jefferson Airplane was on this song, Grace Slick, who had been with the band since the 60s and sang some of their biggest, most iconic songs (“White Rabbit” “Somebody to Love”) was, though she too considers it to be one of the worst songs ever.
just listened to a little bit of it and I think there are a lot worse out there just saying 🤷🏻♀️
There are definitely a lot of worse #1 songs out there. Reaching #1 was never a measurement of quality, just momentary popularity.