“We Built This City On Consequence-Free Self-Indulgence” Might Have Actually Been A Better Song

Joe Doakes emails:

My iPod collection is eclectic. Jefferson Starship’s “We Built This City (On Rock-and-Roll)” just played.

It occurs to me that if you’re talking about San Francisco, that’s probably true; Haight-Ashbury typifies that burg.

But New York or Cleveland? They weren’t built by rock-and-roll. They were built by Big Band and Swing, the music of the people who won The War and made American manufacturing the greatest force in the world throughout the 1940’s and 50’s.

Rock-and-roll was the Baby Boomers music. Rock-and-roll didn’t build those cities, it killed those cities, and many more. Detroit was Mo-Town when the old folks ran it; with Baby Boomers in charge, it’s Mo-Handout-Town. The fortunes of iron-ore-mining town Hibbing waned exactly as home-boy Bob Dylan’s waxed.

Okay, it’s only a song and not a very good one at that, not some great philosophical commentary on society.

Joe is too tactful.  Starship’s “We Built This City” is perhaps the worst song in Top Forty history, rivaled only by Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight”.

But that actually reinforces his point: 

Still, I wonder how much difference it would make if popular culture turned away from “if it feels good, do it” and back to “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Joe Doakes

Tangential thought: what does it say about either the music or the city that Minneapolis’ “Wedge” neighborhood (from Franklin to Lake between Hennepin and Lyndale) is exactly the same pompous, pretentious, overpriced wanna-be-artist’s-garret toilet now as it was before the Replacements’ heyday?

Speaking of which:

No, Joe’s right. America was the first culture in history to develop an “independent” “youth culture”. And now that those “youth” run the place, we’re completely screwed.

19 thoughts on ““We Built This City On Consequence-Free Self-Indulgence” Might Have Actually Been A Better Song

  1. Perhaps it is too recent, but Rihanna’s Umbrella song has got to be worse than any song mentioned in the post.

    (Ella ella, ay ay ay)
    Under my umbrella
    (Ella ella, ay ay ay)
    Under my umbrella
    (Ella ella, ay ay ay)
    Under my umbrella
    (Ella ella, ay ay ay ay, ay ay)

    The fact that this drivel is popular says all we need to know about current pop culture.

  2. My wierd meter just hit the peg. Five minutes before this post appeared I was reading Grace Slick’s bio on Wikipedia.

  3. “…rock-and-roll was the Baby Boomers music. Rock-and-roll didn’t build those cities, it killed those cities, and many more. Detroit was Mo-Town when the old folks ran it; with Baby Boomers in charge…”

    Gloves off.

    Rock and roll kept Mo-town afloat for a time.

    Democrats killed that city. Don’t blame the “boomers.”

    The killer is still on the loose.

    As for Bob Dylan, everybody knows he came from Arizona–he told us.

  4. The song is likely the worst piece of music in the history of music. The irony is not lost one me that the obviously crafted to sell song rails against the music “business”.

    But it is just plain annoying…more annoying than fingernails on a chalkboard (as well as .38 Special’s “Rockin’ Into The Night”.)

  5. Before you rip on the SVB, consider please, the fact that our kids will be reminiscing such song titles as “Bitch I lied” http://www.elyrics.net/read/i/insane-clown-posse-lyrics/bitch-i-lied-lyrics.html

    The 70’s were the last era where we kept all the nasty shit we thought, and did, to ourselves. Humanity was on the 30 meter board above the cesspool, and we broke the surface so smoothly not a ripple was observed.

    Lookin’ forward to a little afternoon delight? Sure, bitch.

  6. Joe is too tactful. Starship’s “We Built This City” is perhaps the worst song in Top Forty history, rivaled only by Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight”.

    I’d put “We Built This City” right up there, especially for the 80s. But the heart of darkness is 1974. All in one year, we had:

    Seasons in the Sun
    Billy, Don’t Be a Hero
    The Night Chicago Died
    Having My Baby
    The Streak
    The “ooga shocka” version of Hooked on a Feeling
    The “rock and roll” version of the Lord’s Prayer by Sister Janet Mead
    Clap for the Wolfman

    And in a stunning spasm of schlock and bad taste, the following trilogy emanated from Jim Stafford:

    Spiders and Snakes
    My Girl Bill
    Wildwood Weed

    Put it this way — “Kung Fu Fighting” (also 1974) felt like a masterpiece in that context.

  7. Swiftee: +1.

    Mr. D: This ties in with one of my long navel-gazing series I’m sketching out (now that my Springsteen thing is finally done).

    And a quick check shows that while I thought “Rocky” and “Run Joey Run” were ’74, they were in fact ’75. Cosmic load-balancing?

  8. And a quick check shows that while I thought “Rocky” and “Run Joey Run” were ’74, they were in fact ’75. Cosmic load-balancing?

    The only possible explanation. ’75 also gave us the “Bertha Butt Boogie.” The mid 70s were brutal.

  9. Also “Dy-no-mite” by Tony Camillo’s Bazuka.

    Which shows that misspelling words didn’t start with gangsta rap.

  10. I’ve got to correct our gracious host. Since San Francisco is noted for its Victorian architecture and the like, it most certainly was NOT built on Rocky Road, or Rock-N-Roll, or whatever. It would be built on classical and parlor music for the most part, with a touch of opera and the like.

    Now we could argue that San Francisco, like any number of other cities, was destroyed by rock-n-roll. But built? No way, not even Cleveland or Edina.

  11. ” . . . the worst song in Top Forty history, rivaled only by Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight”.

    But . . . but . . . marimba!

    .

  12. My iPod collection is eclectic. Jefferson Starship’s “We Built This City (On Rock-and-Roll)” just played.
    The meaning of ‘eclectic’ has changed. For some people, anyhow.

  13. Also “Dy-no-mite” by Tony Camillo’s Bazuka.

    I’d forgotten that one. Wow, that’s pretty dire. Goes on the shelf with “Get Dancin'” by Disco Tex and His Sex-o-Lettes. The mid 70s were full of dire.

  14. Disco Duck?
    Don’t Cry Out Loud?
    Tie a Yellow Ribbon?
    John Denver’s entire oeuvre
    Seventies pop suckitude is boundless…

  15. The mid 70’s were also full of the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, Joe Cocker, Tower of Power, Pense & Cold Blood, Earth, Wind & Fire.

    And for those that have never heard what Journey was before that little half a fag Steve Perry got his hands on it, feast your ears:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wid73ikVojc

    There was gold in them hills, too.

  16. Swiftee,

    I know. That’s part of what I’m going to be writing about in my next big music series.

  17. Mid ’70’s hmmmmm……..let us not forget Muskrat Love by Captain & Tennille!

    God I hate flashbacks, some memories are just too painful !!

  18. I will include my first ever childhood “favorite song” to this list: Rhinestone Cowboy – Glen Campbell, 1975.

    Also, You Light Up My Life by Debbie Boone. 1977, a bit towards the end of the mid 70s, but still close enough.

    Interesting how both music and the muscle car declined in the early-mid 70s.

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