"We didn't literally build it."

On the way into work today, I was listening to my FM radio “walkman.” It’s not actually a “walkman” because it’s the size of a modern-day MP3 player, but it only has the capacity to play the stink that’s on the airwaves these days, so no cassette tapes or 8-tracks or what have you. It only cost me $1 at a yard sale and it’s useful in blocking out the excessive cellphone conversations that I’m subjected to while riding Muni. While wading through the options---Billy Joel, Nelly Fartardo, Elton John, John Mayer, and the like---I was fortunate to come across an 80s anthem, “We Built This City,” by Starship. This is a song about my town, San Francisco!

According to Blender Magazine (who!?!), this song is the #1 worst song ever. I strongly disagree! Sure, it’s crappy pop, but you can dance to it. In fact, you can’t NOT dance to it. But dig the lyrics, “Someone's always playing corporation games / Who cares, they're always changing corporation names…” Starship was callin’ this corporatization shit out way back in the 80s. Blender Magazine’s editor said, “"It purports to be anti-commercial but reeks of '80s corporate-rock commercialism. It's a real reflection of what practically killed rock music in the '80s." Yeah yeah, and Yoko Ono killed the Beatles.

It’s not a rock song y’all, it’s pop. It’s a ditty! Rock is what you bang your head to, while pop is what you compromise on while riding in the car with older relatives. Surely Starship was aware of the fact that in 1985 they weren’t as rock as Van Halen or Aerosmith, two bands who weren’t even as “rock” as they were a decade earlier. Come to think of it, the 80s was a decade when perhaps “rock n’ roll” went on vacation, as evidenced by the popular 80s wrestling duo “Rock n’ Roll Express” pictured here. One look at these men and you get the sudden feeling that you were not alerted of the national revision to the term rock n’ roll, which now means “faggy meatwadism.”



“We Built This City” is a classic goofy pop hit, addressing the importance of a city owning its rock n’ roll, but never quite claiming ownership. Now we all know the history: Jefferson Airplane, a popular 60s San Francisco band, evolved into the 80s group Starship. Previous incarnations of the band performed under the name Jefferson Starship and then later simply “Starship” before becoming the embarrasingly named “Jefferson Starship The Next Generation” in 1991. There were probably fights and drugs, law suits and affairs, and all kinds of chaos, the kind of stuff that’s inevitable for bands who play together over decades. But you can’t take these guys seriously. I mean, look what happened to the Grateful Dead in the 80s, okay?

Band drama aside, I think that Starship was keeping it real. In “We Built This City,” they even make this distinction in the lyrics, “We just want to dance here, someone stole the stage / They call us irresponsible, write us off the page!” I stand by my decision to support this song as one of the better, singable, fun songs from that decade. If there were a tagline for the 80s, it would be “just dance” and Starship nailed it.