We Built This City

Content

What exists of a narrative in the song consists of an argument between the singers (Mickey Thomas and Grace Slick) and an unidentified "you", presumably a music industry executive, who is marginalizing the band and ripping off money from them by "playing corporation games" ("who counts the money underneath the bar?"). In response to this injustice, the singers remind the villain of their importance and fame: "Listen to the radio! Don't you remember? We built this city on rock and roll!" A spoken-word interlude explicitly mentions the Golden Gate Bridge and refers to "the city by the bay", a common moniker for Starship's hometown of San Francisco; Starship's predecessors, Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship, were prominent members of San Francisco's psychedelic rock scene in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. However, the interlude then follows in rapid fashion by referring to the same city as "the city that rocks", a reference to Cleveland, Ohio (home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum), and then "the city that never sleeps", one of the nicknames for New York City. Capitalizing on the ambiguity, several radio stations added descriptions of their own local areas when they broadcast the song, or even simply added their own ident in its place.

Production

The song was engineered by producer Bill Bottrell and arranged by Bottrell and Jasun Martz.

The song features Mickey Thomas and Grace Slick sharing lead vocals. MTV executive and former DJ Les Garland provided the DJ voice-over during the song's bridge.

Reception

"We Built This City" received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group in 1986.

Blender magazine's "50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever"

The defunct magazine Blender's ranking of the song as the worst song ever was in conjunction with a VH1 Special of The 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs...Ever. In order to qualify for the distinction, the songs on the list had to be a popular hit at some point, thus disqualifying many songs that would by consensus be considered much worse. Blender editor Craig Marks said of the song, "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."

However, an article in the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out that "Blender's list—compiled via an arbitrary and anecdotal data collection process and ranked by Marks—included several whimsical criteria. One was to go easy on novelty songs. In a discussion with the band's manager, Bill Thompson, he was surprised at the ranking, but also "thrilled" because of the other high-profile groups on the list, saying, "I wish Blender had called us for a group shot. I'd love to have my picture taken with Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney." Mickey Thomas, one of the singers of Starship, said in 2010 regarding the review from the by-then folded Blender magazine,

From what I heard, they got so much flak about it that they sort of retracted their statements in a way about the song. And not only that, but Blender's folded, and we're still here.

When asked about why the song was listed as #1 on the review, the editor of Blender magazine, Craig Marks, referenced the line of the song "Marconi plays the mamba" by asking,

Who is Marconi? And what is 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 web site writes it that way. It makes sense neither way."

The Richmond Times-Dispatch listed other songs by Starship that would have made more sense for being on the top of the list than "We Built This City," concluding,

No, no. They chose the song that references Marconi, the father of the radio. The song that inserted a cool snippet of DJ chatter from the band's beloved San Francisco. The song that found Grace Slick enunciating the phrase "corporation games" with nutty abandon.

Rolling Stone Top Ten Worst Songs of the 1980s

In 2011 a Rolling Stone magazine online readers poll named "We Built This City" as the worst song of the 1980s. The song's winning margin was so large that the magazine reported it "could be the biggest blow-out victory in the history of the Rolling Stone Readers Poll".

GQ Worst Song of All Time

In August 2016, Gentlemen's Quarterly magazine declared this song as the worst of all time, referring to it as "the most detested song in human history".

Commercial uses

In 1990, ITT Corporation began using a variation (as "We Built This Business") to promote their purchase of the financial services firm The Hartford.

The song is featured in 2011's The Muppets, as well as the Broadway musical Rock of Ages and its film adaptation, where it is sung in counterpoint with Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It".

In 2014 it was used for a United Kingdom commercial for the 3 mobile service. Following the advert, the song climbed 158 places to number 25 in the UK Singles Chart.

The song is featured in the video game Grand Theft Auto V on the Los Santos Rock Radio station on the enhanced Xbox One/PS4 editions of the game.

The 2017 LEGO Batman Movie features a remixed variant of the song prominently in its movie teaser and trailer.