Built a Song that No one Admits to Liking

There are books about the most hated songs.

88.5Fm in Philadelphia had a countdown of such songs a few years ago. The song, We Built this City came out as the most hated song. This song always makes those kind of lists.

For some, such as me, I don’t see why. I’ve read other blogs, saw videos, and tried to understand the great dislike.

I do get that given the pedigree of artists involved, it doesn’t live up. Bernie Taupin wrote Heart’s These Dreams and all of Elton Johns interesting songs. Martin Page wrote Dancing in Heaven with his band Q Pop. Find a workout class in the 1980s and you heard that song. Starship, the newly rebuilt Jefferson Starship performed the song. There were talented writers, a band that had been around for almost 20 years and a need to prove this new band could work. In the end, this totaled to a typical 1980s pop song.

I lived in the 1980s and there was a lot of terrible music, Bon Jovi, Madonna, Ready for the World, Janet Jackson. Since then we have suffered Hootie and the Blowfish, New Kids on the Block, LFO.

Why does this song have a rabid base of hatred?

There are terrible songs that are so bad that we just shut it off and forget it. There are whole genres that you haven't listened to. In the case of this song, there is the artist pedigree and it’s so damn catchy. This was a former number one song in America. It is on the Starship Greatest Hits. It's part of the Jefferson Airplane/Starship history. You can’t shut this off and forget it.

Don’t you remember? Can’t you remember? We built this city on rock and roll.

The song is fun too. It's kitchy references to Marconi to San Fransisco to the Golden Gate bridge. There is even this radio deejay in the middle of it.

It’s like you want to hear just to someone say, “yeah I hate it,” but you don’t shut it off. The song is just so 1980s. Really, how many of you remember that LFO song from 1999?

So let’s all face it. It’s not a bad song.