I was moving chairs out of Andrew’s classroom the other day when I noticed he had written some sentences on his board (ostensibly to teach his seventh graders about adverbs or something). One sentence read as follows:
“Mr. Watt dances the samba badly.”
Of course, because I’m me, I thought: “Hmmm. ‘Samba’ rhymes with ‘mamba.’ And the song that ‘mamba’ makes me think of is…”
Well, I can tell you what it’s not. It’s not “Mambo #5.” It’s not Herbert Grönemeyer’s “Mambo.” It isn’t even a Tito song. No, “mambo” makes me think of “mamba,” which makes me think of…Jefferson Starship.
Jefferson. Goddamn. Starship.
My quest became simple: I MUST FIND “WE BUILT THIS CITY.” EVEN THOUGH IT MAY BE THE WORST ARENA ROCK ANTHEM EVER WRITTEN, I MUST FIND IT. NOW. OR I WILL DIE.
It took a good half an hour of rooting through boxes of CDs (all the compliation CDs are in boxes, not out on the shelf — they take up too much space). Finally, I stumbled across “Greatest Hits of the 80’s (Volume 2).” Oh, thank you, Jesus! I have it now! I was ecstatic.
My excitement over finding the song was, as you can imagine, tempered by the process of actually listening to the song itself. Do you remember the lyrics? You don’t? Well, in an effort to spread the weirdness around, here they are:
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
Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don’t you remember
We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll
We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll
Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll
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
Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don’t you remember
We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll
We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll
Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll
It’s just another Sunday, in a tired old street
Police have got the choke hold, oh then we just lost the beat
Who counts the money underneath the bar
Who rides the wrecking ball in two rock guitars
Don’t tell us you need us, ’cos we’re the ship of fools
Looking for America, coming through your schools
(I’m looking out over that golden gate bridge
Out on another gorgeous sunny saturday, not seein’ that bumper to bumper traffic)
Don’t you remember?
(What’s your favorite radio station, in your favorite radio city
The city by the bay, the city that rocks, the city that never sleeps?)
Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don’t you remember
We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll
We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll
Built this city, we built this city on rock and roll
I think we can all agree that this song raises a few intriguing questions:
- Since when was San Francisco built on rock and roll?
- Guglielmo Marconi was the inventor of the radio. Unfortunately for Starship, he lived not in California, but in Massachusetts. And he did not play the “mamba”; a “mamba” is a snake. He was, however, a fascist. Discuss.
- “Hoopla” is not a real word that a real musician would use in a lyric, now is it? Find me another lyric with “hoopla” in it, and I’ll pay you $1.
- “Who rides the wrecking ball in two rock guitars”? Who, indeed?
- Did this band horde every Yamaha DX-7 out there? Starship uses those synths like they were going out of style. And Linn Drums. And a slap bass. And Grace Slick.
- How is this song at all connected with, like, “White Rabbit” or “Volunteers” or “Somebody to Love”? No band in the history of bands has become so incredibly crappy so incredibly quickly.
Repeated listenings force me to acknowledge Bill Botrell’s mix (which is stunningly crisp and clean, despite the synths) and the fact that the whole “Marconi” bridge is undeniably catchy, even though it makes no sense whatsoever.
Anyway, “We Built This City” may well be one of the worst songs ever written, up there with “Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini” and “Wildfire.” Agree or disagree?
UPDATE: It seems as if the pretentious dicks at Blender agree with me. See this article from USA Today: “‘We Built This City’ Ranks As Worst Record Ever.”
UPDATE #2: Further research reveals that the lyrics to “We Built This City” were written by none other than Bernie Taupin. That’s right. BERNIE TAUPIN.
Starship’s manager, Bill Thompson, had this to say about the Blender poll: “I talked to Bernie and asked him how it felt to have written the worst song of all time and the best-selling song of all time, ‘Candle in the Wind,’ Thompson says. ‘He said it’s kind of like being Tom Cruise the year he was in Cocktail and Rain Man. Maybe this is good. It’s publicity. I’m going to try to talk RCA into rereleasing the song.’”
Not if I don’t do a straight cover of it first…!
