Worst song ever?

[LakeTex]

Blender Magazine says it's Starship: We built this city.


Link: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/liv..._of_the_worst/

Text:'We Built This City' is best of the worst
By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff | April 24, 2004

No. 1 is usually a good place to be for a band. Making it to the top spot on Blender's "50 Worst Songs Ever!" list is a somewhat more dubious honor. The plastic tiara -- and we're guessing no one will be especially shocked at the news -- goes to Starship's 1985 anthem "We Built This City." In the May issue, on newstands tomorrow, Blender describes the song as "the truly horrible sound of a band taking the corporate dollar while sneering at those who take the corporate dollar." Blender editor Craig Marks says the song was the unanimous choice of virtually every colleague, industry insider, music fan, and friend he polled.

"The outpouring of bile against this song was amazing," Marks says. "A few people claimed to be able to scientifically prove that `We Built This City' is the worst song ever. It really felt like we'd hit a nerve in the collective unconscious."

The news came as a surprise to Starship singer Mickey Thomas, who joined the group in 1979 when it was known as Jefferson Starship, which formed in 1974 from the ashes of Jefferson Airplane. He read about it in USA Today on Monday.

"It kind of hurts my feelings," Thomas says by phone. "I'm really proud of that song. For me it was a response to lost innocence. It was about rock music growing up and losing its idealism. I wonder if Craig Marks even listened to the lyrics, which are really interpretive."

Marks listened, all right.

"Who is Marconi? And what is the mamba?" asks Marks, referring to the line "Marconi plays 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."

Blender's list -- compiled via a totally arbitrary and anecdotal data collection process and ranked by Marks however the heck he wanted to -- included several whimsical criteria. One was to go easy on novelty songs.

"They set the bar lower almost by definition," Marks says. "And we basically like novelty hits. We would argue that `Macarena' is better than `Sounds of Silence' " -- which by virtue of "self-important lyrics like `hear my words that I might teach you,' " landed at number 42.

The magazine pledged to only pick on a band once. "One Genesis song would beget another and another. Finally we had to decide whether Genesis's `Illegal Alien' was worse than Phil Collins's "Sussudio.' It is."

Additionally, songs needed to be reasonably contemporary and have attained a certain measure of success so readers would be familiar with them. This wasn't an issue with "We Built This City," which Starship manager Bill Thompson notes went to No. 1 in 23 countries. Thompson also enjoys pointing out that the song's lyrics were written by none other than Elton John's longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin. The music was composed by pro songwriters Martin Page, Dennis Lambert, and Peter Wolf (not to be confused with the former J. Geils frontman).

"I talked to Bernie yesterday 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."

Thomas, who performs these days as Starship featuring Mickey Thomas, always sings "We Built This City" at the fairs and festivals he frequents during the summer months. He says he plays it harder now, with more of a rock edge than the version the band recorded in the mid-'80s.

"I still love this song, and I can't imagine how the audience would feel if I didn't play it," says Thomas, whose new album, "Over the Edge," featuring songs written by Neal Schon of Journey and Jack Blades of Night Ranger, will be released in Europe next week. Baffled as he is by Blender's diss, he's thrilled to be in the same company as some of the other artists who made it to the top 10. "I wish Blender had called us for a group shot. I'd love to have my picture taken with Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney."

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.



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