The American Spectator : We Built This City!

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We Built This City!

By Daniel J. Flynn on 10.14.11 @ 6:09AM

Hippies-turned-yuppies hate to be reminded they sold out.

“We Built This City” has been named the worst song — again. Rolling Stone announced this week that its readers have dubbed the #1 hit as the worst the 1980s have to offer. The vote was apparently a landslide. The synth-driven tune — synth drums, synth slap-bass, synth synths — had earlier topped a Blender magazine list of the worst songs ever. Since then, it has proved the best at being named the worst.

But more revolting than Glenn Frey’s “You Belong to the City”? Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone”? Color Me Badd’s “I Wanna Sex You Up”? Really?

Listening back a quarter century for the worst requires selective ear muffs. Auto-Tune hadn’t even been invented. Lady Gaga’s “Edge of Glory,” a radio staple this summer past, is clearly the most horrible number to receive saturation airplay. Nobody fails as spectacularly as the famous.

Ms. Gaga claims that her grandfather’s death inspired the cliché-ridden cut. “And I got a reason that you’re who should take me home tonight/I need a man that thinks it’s right when it’s so wrong/Tonight, yeah, baby!” Is she suggesting that there was something really “wrong” with her grandpa? “I’m on the edge of glory/And I’m hanging on a moment of truth/I’m on the edge, the edge, the edge, the edge, the edge, the edge, the edge.” We kinda get the point.

Surrounded by so much that sucks, must we really go back 26 years to find the apex of awful? Alas, “hits” are often an anagram solved only later. Starship’s “We Built This City” topped the charts in November of 1985 before its descent to the bottom rung. It’s infectious, but like gonorrhea. We liked it before we hated it.

Why are listeners no longer “knee deep in the hoopla”?

“We Built This City” is a painful mirror into the baby boomer soul. It is a sonic reminder of how much a generation of self-professed idealists had sold out. Here is Grace Slick, once the drugged-out darling of Haight-Ashbury, belting out a pop-pandering song (probably written in a boardroom) set to soulless artificial instruments. It would be as if Jerry Rubin had become a capitalist.

The lyrics suggest something vaguely subversive: “The police have the choke hold” and “Someone’s always playing corporation games.” But it’s as dangerous as a Jonas brother dating your daughter. Starship’s equally atrocious video, featuring a singing Abraham Lincoln and giant dice rolling toward a fleeing mob, concludes with a Les Miserables feel. Like Starbucks, Starship marketed their corporate commercialism within an anti-corporate framework. The people who really hate “We Built This City” usually fall for that ruse (see Ben & Jerry’s, Apple, Whole Foods, etc.). Gestures and pretentions didn’t cut it here.

They certainly did a generation earlier. The epiphany-inducing “We Built This City” jarred more than a few holdovers into grasping that perhaps the Summer-of-Love Jefferson Airplane was no more sincere than its Reagan-era remnant. It’s not as though the big-haired Grace Slick of 1985 was more trapped in the times than the hippie chick imploring listeners to “Go ask Alice.” Ever feel like you’ve been had?

If “We Built This City” had merely reminded aging hippies that yet another hippie icon had sold out, it would not explain the enduring visceral response. It is not so much a betrayal as a reflection. The song is a sonic evocation of a whole generation’s phony idealism.

Yippies-turned-yuppies didn’t appreciate MTV and FM radio incessantly broadcasting aural evidence of the counterculture defecting to the cash-counting culture. They may have bristled at an acid Aquanet-overdosed Grace Slick singing with a smiling, mulleted dude resembling Marty Balin’s better-looking cousin. But it’s not the evolution from “White Rabbit” to “We Built This City” that truly horrifies them. It’s their personal long, strange trips.

The journey from Jefferson Airplane to Starship is the road more travelled. Eldridge Cleaver became a Republican. Jane Fonda hawked aerobics videos. Abbie Hoffman killed himself in a turkey coop strangely converted into a human apartment. They had become what they hated or they hated what they had become.

The sixties had a bad eighties.

About the Author

Daniel J. Flynn, the author of The War on Football: Saving America’s Game, blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (198) | Leave a comment Leave a comment

Jack von Bauer| 10.14.11 @ 6:18AM

/I'm on the edge, the edge, the edge, the edge, the edge, the edge, the edge."

JUMP.

And do us all a favor ya tenth rate Debbie Harry.

Dave | 10.14.11 @ 10:35AM

Having spent thirty-five years in broadcasting and surfing the music world, one thing is clear: Music is in the ear of the beholder. Or simply ... the listenee.

After you cut through the pseudo intellect of those who deem themselves qualified to determine those annual listings of Best & Worst ... in my mind, it's all a matter of what blows (or still blows) our skirt up.

From my era, or the stone age, one of the least, musically proficient song ever recorded in Pop Music history, at least from the technical aspect, is a legendary platter titled Angel Baby by Rosie and the Originals. The sax solo is flat, Rosie's voice won't remind anyone of Whitney, Streisand or the classically train opera singer of your choice, but take a drive through any section of East Los Angeles and see how my times you'll still hear Angel Baby blasting through a bedroom window or some graying banger's low-rider.

Technically, it's at the least a very mediocre song, but then that's why the good Lord blessed us with the freedom of choice. You don't have to listen to the damn thing. That is unless it's been buried somewhere deeper inside the Obamacare bill. In that case ... listening to Rosie and the flat sax solo will be mandatory and subject to a fine for refusal.

See how socialism, at its extreme works?

Ponder that, and we'll cover gay military weddings next time.

Occam's Tool| 10.14.11 @ 1:32PM

I'm sorry, but the two worst pop songs of the 80s, and possibly all time, Belong to Rupert Holmes:

"The Pina Colada song" and ""Him."

Barf, Barf, Barf. I'd rather listen to Yusuf Islam.

Occam's Tool| 10.14.11 @ 1:36PM

Holmes also wrote and played piano on the hit from the 70s about cannibalism, "Timothy."

Truly a schlockmeister.

Jack von Bauer| 10.14.11 @ 3:32PM

He must have been the inspiration for the neo-commies EAT THE RICH chant!

Jack von Bauer| 10.14.11 @ 3:34PM

Yeah -- Yousef has updated his Lay Lady Lay song to the more current Slay Infidel Slay...

Not that he's a crazy Muslim, of course.

Dave | 10.16.11 @ 11:27AM

Hey, Jack: Unless I missed some listing on the Billboard charts, Lay Lady Lay was a Bob Dylan diddy from his late '60s album "Nashville Skyline." Or did Mr Islam record his own version while still raking in big bucks under the name ... Cat Whatzhizface?

Just askin'.

Herb| 10.14.11 @ 5:10PM

Oh, c'mon, "Pina Colada Song" is harmless 80's kitsch, and it's a love song for goodness sake!

Should Have Impeached| 10.14.11 @ 3:41PM

"...one of the least, musically proficient song ever recorded in Pop Music history, at least from the technical aspect, is a legendary platter titled Angel Baby by Rosie and the Originals."

Yeah, but as you note when you say "music is in the ear of the beholder," I'd bet what hooks most people on that song (including me) is the melody. So music isn't really all about "technical" but about what we like to hear... which is as it should be, no? That lazy, flat sax sounds really good in the middle of a slow, catchy melody, so who cares about "technical." It becomes about the hook and mood. The total package counts whether great technique is part of it or not.

In a sense, whoever created the melody and lyrics, and married them to a winsome voice and moody sax, displayed a kind of "technical" genius of his/her own.

Bill| 10.14.11 @ 6:37PM

"one of the least, musically proficient song ever recorded in Pop Music history, at least from the technical aspect, is a legendary platter titled Angel Baby by Rosie and the Originals"

Yes, probably true; still you're absolutely when you say that musical taste is in the ear of the auditor. Also, contemporarily with Angel Baby was the most intriguing and ahead-of-its-time song of the period, Sally Go 'Round the Roses by the Jaynettes.

Border Babe| 10.17.11 @ 1:43AM

Angel Baby, my angel baby...
Great song...one of the best...

Alan Brooks| 10.14.11 @ 3:59PM

A given that this is a rightwing blog, so you spin it this way. But you've got the hippe-yippie-cum-yuppies in a double-bind: if they don't sell out they are losers; if they do sell out they are hypocrites.

Grzmlyk| 10.14.11 @ 4:55PM

No, no no. You've missed the point.

They're ALWAYS hypocrites.

THAT is the sina qua non of liberalism.

Hence:

Capitalism is always bad unless it's making ME money (Michael Moore).

We must live spartan lives so as not to upset mother earth - unless you're talking about MY house and MY private jets (Al Gore and every Hollywood celebrity whose net worth exceeds $100 million).

Racisim is always bad - unless it's racism intended to assuage white guilt or if an uppity black dude wants to think for himself (Lawrence O'Donnell).

Green energy windmills must occupy the entire landscape - unless it interferes with MY view (Ted Kennedy).

I'm a feminist - unless I'm busy sending pictures of my genitalia to unsuspecting women (Anthony "Tiny" Weiner).

Tax me more! Just don't bug me about the $1 billion I still owe the IRS (Warren Buffett)

Men must treat women with dignity and respect - unless you're a Democrat; then we'll be your personal recepticals (every feminist who looked the other way during Clinton's presidency).

Eat the Rich - just don't negatively impact my Trust Fund (Occupy Wall Street).

Wall Street's crony capitalism Sucks - Hey, Goldman Sachs, could you use another $1 billion of taxpayer money to ensure I get elected? (Barack Obama.)

Barack isn't a socialist - he just wants to redistribute wealth fairly (the mainstream media.)

All life is precious, even the most heinous rapist's. Unless, of course, I want to kill the innocent child in my womb. (Planned Parenthood)

Yup. I could go on all night.

Alan Brooks| 10.14.11 @ 5:34PM

But no matter what the hippie/yippie/trippie/Maltese bippie -cum hip-capitalists do, they are in the wrong for you.

You want them to be like you.

Marc| 10.14.11 @ 6:04PM

Of course they are Alan. What don't you understand Grzmlyk's post?

Alan Brooks| 10.14.11 @ 9:56PM

I get Grzmlyk's comment. But conservatives want people to be their own selve, yet be like other people in quest of a loose consensus: authoritarians want individuality yet also want conformity-- which can be done only in the most virtuous of 'societies'.
but as Margaret Thatcher noted, there is no society.

With or without a counterculture (today it is fragmented into many subcultures) we all walk a moral tightrope. To sin or not to sin, that is the question.

OllieK| 10.14.11 @ 6:13PM

Great riff.......

Alan Brooks| 10.14.11 @ 9:59PM

"It would be as if Jerry Rubin had become a capitalist."

Who would THINK such a thing?; and he was run over by a car in California. Why? because he was an anarchist who broke the law by jaywalking!

Merlin| 10.16.11 @ 5:40AM

Grzmlyk,

Great post. Thanks

Bill| 10.14.11 @ 6:40PM

The hippies will say (as they did the first time around) what the Loyalists said after the Spanish Civil War ended in a win for the fascists: "they won all the battles, but we had all the good songs." It wasn't true back in the 1930s, probably was true in the 1960s, and won't be true in the 20-teens.

Alan Brooks| 10.14.11 @ 10:44PM

Okay, I take all your points, however
Ben Stein admitted he was a hippie who
took four hits of LSD,
danced naked in Golden Gate Park
in front of a thousand men, women, and children
in 1967...

Mike Hawk| 10.14.11 @ 6:26AM

Do not equate this garbage with all Boomers. A majority of us are not of the whacked out 60s-80s cliche. Those of us who are veterans are particularly annoyed with any comparison with the hippie-yuppie pseudo-culture. We have suffered that slander long enough. It's like trying to compare Tea Party and the 'occupy' crowd. I for one find one of the worst 'songs' of that era to be John Lennon's "Imagine". It is the national anthem of anarchists and Liberals for the age senile Aquarianism. Pure drivel like most of John Lennon's post Beatle crap. It went downhill with Disco (which I detst "Disco Sucks" ) and crashed and burned with Hip-Hop to the garbage of the present.

Jack von Bauer| 10.14.11 @ 6:35AM

Major Lennon fan -- but Imagine is one of the worst songs ever written.

Though it was in his Yoko-whipped phase.

Mike Hawk| 10.14.11 @ 7:55AM

Like I said, his post Beatles or Yoko-whipped phase as you called it.

Hank| 10.14.11 @ 8:24AM

Mike, I've been waiting for a articulate response to 80's music. Thank you.

anonymous| 10.14.11 @ 10:52AM

A Perfect Circle's cover of "Imagine" is decent.

Redstateboy| 10.14.11 @ 9:10AM

gee... confirmation! I'm not the only one who thought "Imagine" a Song for Bananaheads.

JR| 10.14.11 @ 2:20PM

Yes! I'm not the only one who hates that song. I remember getting into a argument with my step-father,who was a Beatle maniac, about what I thought would be a crappy world to live in if what John imagined came true. Funny thing is it was my step-father who latter on introduced me to Rush Limbaugh. Go figure.

Should Have Impeached| 10.14.11 @ 3:44PM

I always loved the melody. Always couldn't stand the lyrics.

Skippy| 10.14.11 @ 4:15PM

Imagine stunk on ice.
Worst song ever.

cuban pete| 10.14.11 @ 9:17AM

Yoko Ono is my idol. A talentless, unpleasant woman snookered people into thinking she had something to say and parlayed that into becoming a multi-millionaire and living in the Dakota.
Is this a great country or what?
The worst pop song ever is "MacArthur Park".
Hat tip to Dave Barry.
Have a great weekend.

LarryK| 10.14.11 @ 10:14AM

"MacArthur Park" is worse than "We Built This City," but "We Didn't Start the Fire" is worse than either of them. And if we move into the 90s/00s, "Bye Bye Bye" sets the standard against which all other bad songs are judged.

The Bruce| 10.16.11 @ 10:39PM

In fairness, even Lennon later repudiated that song. He recognized his Useful Idiot status and became a Reagan conservative.

He even saw his liberal contemporaries as ignorant and child-like. I have to give him at least that much credit.

Brian Mc| 10.14.11 @ 7:49AM

Thanks, Mike...well said. And, might I add Rod Stewart? After he left "Stay With Me" in the mirror and gave us "Do You Think I'm Sexy?" we'll never know what might have been if he hadn't joined the crowd of sell-outs.

Jack von Bauer| 10.14.11 @ 8:46AM

Gasoline Alley... great album.

cuban pete| 10.14.11 @ 9:24AM

Hell for me will be listening to Rod Stewart,Cher and Fleetwood Mac for eternity. Yikes, I'll put on Parker, Monk and Coltrane while I still have a chance.

USSAlabama| 10.14.11 @ 9:48AM

I guess I hate all of it, but I was born a little late for it maybe?

I once beat Rod Stewart in the chest with a cane for trying to peel my shirt off.

PaulyD| 10.14.11 @ 6:59AM

Didn't someone write a book about this several years ago? Isn't that where the term BoBo (Bourgeois Bohemians) came from?

Herb| 10.14.11 @ 7:07AM

Don't forget the '80's trash piece that Rush Limbaugh adopted as his signature tune, "My City Was Gone". Once in a while he plays the whole thing and it is truly awful, something that was born and should have died in somebody's parents' basement.

Sixties hippies selling out is a very old story, BTW.

Mike Hawk| 10.14.11 @ 7:56AM

The musical intro was the only good part. It is now only known as the 'Rush' theme and not the rest of it.

Brian B| 10.14.11 @ 10:58AM

The Pretenders had some of the best hooks instrumentally and melodically and rather bad vocals by Chrissie Hynde and absolutely the most inane lyrics one could ever hope to hear.
"Like a pigeon from hell...." [insert eye roll icon]

Mac Jehoff| 10.14.11 @ 2:07PM

My City was Gone lyrics contain references to the burgs surrounding Cleveland who met their demise with the decline of the steel industry. Native Buckeyes and steel haulers will feel some nostalgia whilst listening to Chrissy's warbling. Hey Paul, Hey Paula was worse.

Appleby| 10.14.11 @ 7:33AM

I believe the best movie of all time that shows in stark colours what happened to the hippies -- that is, they turned into their parents -- was The Big Chill. I saw that with my Mom at a very difficult time in my life, and we both discussed it from the same point of view. The Mary Kay Place character (minus the drugs, which I have never touched nor wanted to) expressed a good deal of my own frustration at the time.

I confess I have great memories of We Built This City, though. In 1990 I flew into Darwin (Northwest Territory, Australia) and after some local adventures, rented a land yacht car and drove the Stuart Highway as far as Tennant Creek, which was all the time I had. There I was on a straight highway with little traffic but huge Road Trains occasionally, in a car with a metric speedometer I couldnt read, and no radio stations available. One of the tapes I had with me was Knee Deep in the Hoopla, and I spent happy hours singing We Built This City at the top of my voice, just because it was fun to sing.

There are many more horrible songs (Yummy Yummy Yummy I got Love in my Tummy springs instantly to mind).

Music is subjective. Taste is individual.

Mike Hawk| 10.14.11 @ 7:59AM

Taste is not individual, it is cultural. In and era of 'awful degenerate ' bad taste' the culture has been demeaned and corrupted. BTW, I thought The Big CHill was a stinker.

Bob Grant| 10.14.11 @ 8:53AM

Big Chill was not a stinker. The movie was OK. Good acting, plot, soundtrack, etc. I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't yet seen it.

What was horrific about the Big Chill was what it spawned: the formula for the endless list of sub-par clone movies throughout the 80's through today. Get a group of relate-able characters together, compile a "soundtrack" of their lives, throw in mediocre plot lines and boom, you have a brand new genre of movies that has spread like cancer to this day. I curse the BG for that but, all-in-all, not a bad movie.

As for We Built This City, this crap song speaks for itself. Nothing more to say about it.

PaulyD| 10.14.11 @ 12:05PM

Naw, it was a stinker.

Jack von Bauer| 10.14.11 @ 1:22PM

It was good to see Kevin Kline dead though.

Skippy| 10.14.11 @ 4:16PM

The dead guy was Kevin Costner.
Nice cufflinks...

Jack von Bauer| 10.15.11 @ 11:20AM

Skippy| 10.14.11 @ 4:16PM The dead guy was Kevin Costner....

Best role yet!

Bob Grant| 10.15.11 @ 1:55PM

Your sayin' Kevin Costner couldn't act his way out of a coffin?

Mike Hawk| 10.14.11 @ 5:01PM

Glad you liked it. I thought it stunk. Just my opinion.

cuban pete| 10.15.11 @ 9:50AM

It stunk.

Typical White Person | 10.17.11 @ 11:30AM

Not only was TBC a hugely overrated, overwrought stinker, so was its evil television spawn "The Big Chill: The Series", otherwise known as "Thirtysomething." Both of which are still talked about on NPR, right around fundraising time. Yes, Mary Kay, it really was about,,,fashion. Meet you at Starbucks and you can show me your new Ipad.

Buck Ofama| 10.14.11 @ 1:05PM

>(Yummy Yummy Yummy I got Love in my Tummy springs instantly to mind).

Yes, that is especially graphic, naive and horribly stupid. I suppose those clowns knew what they were suggesting, but these days, they just "create" this type of shit with full purpose. They can't get in the House of Music any other way.

Moe Blotz| 10.14.11 @ 2:19PM

About this time of year circa 1968 I was in Monterrey, Mexico with an old high school buddy staying in a Ramada Inn. The hotel offered several channels of music piped in through the television set and one of the pop songs that was translated into Spanish was Yummy,Yummy, Yummy. It came out Jummy,Jummy,Jummy, tengo querer etc. Strange sounding to a Yanqui ear.

Herb| 10.14.11 @ 5:17PM

If we're back in 1968, then "My Green Tambourine" takes the cake for gag-with-a-spoon! I mean, it's some street freak who thinks people will actually pay him for "playing" a noisy unpitched instrument.

Buck Ofama| 10.14.11 @ 7:21PM

I heard that stupid "song" today. "Drop a dime and I'll play any song you choose". Gee, dipshit, they ALL SOUND ALIKE.

shane| 10.15.11 @ 8:17AM

Been to Tennant Creek and did some time at Katherine. Great trip...

Jack von Bauer| 10.14.11 @ 8:41AM

Well 'We Built This City' is certainly no 'Wake Me Up Before You Go Go'

Bill| 10.14.11 @ 9:15AM

What about "Shannon"? Or was that one from the 70s?

Skippy| 10.14.11 @ 4:18PM

Easy now!
Shannon was an ode to a beloved dog.
For that alone, I cut it some slack.

Buck99| 10.15.11 @ 11:02AM

That song was made even worse by the evil Linda singing it to Robbie in "The Wedding Singer."

Bob Grant| 10.14.11 @ 8:58AM

Video indeed killed the radio star. This Buggles tune was the most prescient piece of art in history.

How ironic that the song itself was classic 80's crap.

Genius?

Occam's Tool| 10.14.11 @ 1:39PM

Yes, and the first video EVER played on MTV. Video Killed the Radio Star.

As regards to "Shannon," yes, it was a 70s hit:

"This song was a hit in the US in 1976, but is perhaps best known for being the subject of a legendary, profanity-laced tirade by American Top 40 radio show host Casey Kasem while recording an episode of the show in 1985. A listener had requested the song as a "Long Distance Dedication" (a regular feature of the AT40 show) to his own recently-deceased dog. Kasem was upset that the show's producers had placed the dedication immediately following the Pointer Sisters' hit "Dare Me," an up-tempo song that Kasem considered a poor lead-in to a sad song like "Shannon" - and he let the producers know of his displeasure in no uncertain terms. In the end, the dedication, and the mismatched songs, were presented as scripted in spite of Kasem's objection, but the outtake of his rant eventually surfaced as a bootleg recording. The so-called "Snuggles tape" (named for the dog to whom the dedication was made) contradicted Kasem's normally straight-laced, easygoing on-air persona, and provided an amusing footnote to his 18-year-long run as the show's original host. (thanks, Joshua - Twin Cities, MN)"

Bob Grant| 10.14.11 @ 2:04PM

For full effect, I'm reading this aloud in my best Kasey Kasem voice.

This makes sense because arabs hate dogs. I guess his arab blood got the best of him :-)

Le Cracquere| 10.14.11 @ 9:00AM

Gentlemen:

Let's go all the way
Let's go all the way
AW WAW WAW
Let's go all the way
NAH NAH NANANA
NAH NANANANA NAH NAH NAH

Stefan Kristen| 10.14.11 @ 9:28AM

Some people call me the space cowboy
Some call me the gangster of love
Some people call me Maurice
'Cause I speak of the pompitous of love

Clint| 10.14.11 @ 9:46AM

when a good time turns around
you must whip it
you will never live it down
unless you whip it
no one gets away
until they whip it

I say whip it
whip it good
I say whip it
whip it good

Carpenter| 10.14.11 @ 11:10AM

Can anyone get through Charlene's "I've Been to Paradise But I've Never Been to Me" without laughing out loud or feeling nausea?

Jack von Bauer| 10.14.11 @ 11:45AM

If I had a hammer for how many times I've thought that!

Bob Grant| 10.14.11 @ 2:16PM

A song about a 70's slut who never found herself.

Err, apparently many others DID, including a preacher. Kinda creepy song.

Skippy| 10.14.11 @ 4:20PM

"I've been undressed in Queens,
and I've seen some scenes,
that a woman ain't s'posed to see..."

SteveInFl| 10.14.11 @ 4:39PM

Thank you for bringing that up. I don't think it gets the abuse it deserves. The part when she starts to talk about what love is wants to make me shoot a nailgun into my ears.

Deadman| 10.16.11 @ 10:39PM

She’d “been to Nice and the isle of Greece” but never been to herself.
Only one isle?

skip| 10.14.11 @ 11:49AM

write me up a 125
post my face wanted dead or alive
take my license all that jive
i can't drive 55!

Jacob Morgan| 10.14.11 @ 1:06PM

Hey, go easy on Sammy, he was complaining about a lack of freedom on the open road. Back then wide open four lane black tops were limited to 55 mph coast to coast in the name of environmentalisim. There was no moral posturing on Sammy's part, he just wanted to be left alone.

Some of the artists who came about in the 1980's never bought into the holier-than-though crap and just wanted to earn a good living and have fun at the same time--could do worse.

skip| 10.14.11 @ 2:25PM

The song sucks. Montrose, and the Van Hagar that was tolerable, do not balance out how bad that song is. Hagar gets a 'Gracie Slick' award for it. The award should be called the 'Sammy' that song is so bad. And I lived the unholy torture that was the interstate system idling - oops - I mean at double nickels. But, since you objected, I'll offer this timeless classic instead:

and I ran
I ran so far away
I just ran
I ran all night and day
I couldn't get away

Jacob Morgan| 10.14.11 @ 5:51PM

The original article was not about bad songs per say, but about bad songs that represented a self-rightous sell-out (e.g., the hippie rebel Grace Slick turning commerical pop and singing a corproate-driven song denouncing corporations). Whatever the artistic merits of I can't drive 55, it was not a sell out in any way. I remember those days of 55 mph too, it took forever to get anywere.

I kind of wonder why Grace Slick was even in Starship at all? She sounded like she was high or hung over most of the time. In the City video her eyes seemed to be wildly staring at something. The other, male, singer seemed to do most of the singing. It was as though the band wanted to give the impression of having a connection to the 60's or something.

Can't remember the name of the song, but Starship did have a particularly idiotic peace song (the Nuclear Furniture album I think) where they wondered what Jews and Arabs would say if Mohammed and Jesus were to have a walk together, not seeming to notice that Jews are not especially impressed with either one of them. Should have stuck to singing about building cities.

A Flock Of Seagulls, that was a good song and a goofy video.

Bill| 10.14.11 @ 6:02PM

Have you seen the saucers?

Star children, on the back road to salvation
Children of the forest, child of the Woodstock Nation...

With lyrics like that, getting stoned was probably the most likely-looking solution.

Bob Grant| 10.14.11 @ 7:59PM

Come on man. This was the 'gull's only hit song. And a good one at that. Nice guitar solo, unique in sound with a nice melancholic/moody vibe about it.

Not big on the FOSG look or the rest of what they put out but this particular song is an 80's gem.

Next...

Jack von Bauer| 10.15.11 @ 11:22AM

How dare you crap on The Flock of Seagulls sir!

Occam's Tool| 10.14.11 @ 1:41PM

Yes, but that was not among Devo's most awesome songs: these would include "Satisfaction, [cover]" "Freedom of Choice," "Mongoloid," and "Space Junk."

Riff Raff| 10.14.11 @ 2:46PM

Can anyone define "pompitous?" I'll never understand the appeal of Steve Miller.

Skippy| 10.14.11 @ 4:21PM

The best part of Miller was his late harp player, Norton Buffalo.
Ave atque vale.

Bob Grant| 10.15.11 @ 2:04PM

Pompatus - Whatever needs to be said, and in whatever necessary language, at a particular moment in time to ensure the bedding down of a desired lady.

- Maurice

Buck Ofama| 10.14.11 @ 1:02PM

As an occasional keyboard player in a club band, I have noticed these lyrical masterpieces during break-time, when the DJ is playing his reckerts:

"Roses don't smell like poo poo"

"Lick my cocoa puff"

"Swish, don't swallow; spit when I'm finished"

"Till the sweat runs down my balls"

"My oh my, you're so good lookin;
you hold yourself together like a pair of bookends" (WTF?)

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me."

FUCKIN MORONS- the ones that buy this shit.

Lee Ghume| 10.14.11 @ 7:06PM

Bird,bird, bird bird's the word;well don't you know about the bird? Everybody knows that the bird is the word. Hmmm mow mow papa hm mow mamow , hmm mow mow papa hmm mowmamow. ...Blblblblblblblblblblblblblblblbl oowachoowachowawawawaaaaaaaaaah. Surfer Bird.

Bill| 10.14.11 @ 9:14AM

''It would be as if Jerry Rubin had become a capitalist."

That's a joke, right? Of course it is, it must be.

Skippy| 10.14.11 @ 1:00PM

This Wikipedia entry confirmed what I dimly recalled of Rubins last years.

Near the end of his life, Rubin was heavily involved in multi-level marketing of health foods and nutritional supplements.

Snort!

Bill| 10.14.11 @ 5:57PM

That was what I was trying to get across, that the last twenty or so years of his life were spent in free market (read capitalist) pursuits.

Steve A| 10.14.11 @ 9:19AM

If I ever come across "Wake me up before you go go," when spinning the dial it makes me want to take a hammer to the dash.

PaulyD| 10.14.11 @ 11:59AM

That or "Kung Fu Fighting..."

Timothy L. Pennell| 10.14.11 @ 9:26AM

What was that? Is he getting PAID for that article. A story about a bad song by a 60's group, in the 80's.
What's tomorrow's article? A story about a Bad Article that was written the day before, about a Bad Song by a 60's group, in the 80's?
Emmett Tyrrell. Where do I go to get a Job Application for the American Spectator?
Seriously.

Jack von Bauer| 10.14.11 @ 9:49AM

Smell the Glove

Bob Grant| 10.14.11 @ 8:03PM

Big bottom, big bottom, talk about mudflaps my girl's got 'em

Big bottom drive me out of my mind, how can I leave this behind.

Buck99| 10.15.11 @ 11:06AM

LMAO. I think the point of all this was songs that you would have actually heard on the radio, but man were those the best parodies of rock songs ever, delivered without a hint of irony.

Rudy| 10.15.11 @ 2:19PM

Lyrics perfectly accompanied by nothing but loud bass and bass drum..."big bottom", indeed. Brilliant.

Buck Ofama| 10.14.11 @ 12:56PM

STFU and go listen to your old reckerts from the 60's.

Jacob Morgan| 10.14.11 @ 1:16PM

Maybe it is a parallel to current events, seems that those who claimed moral superiority just yesterday are dipping so much lower than those they once denounced.

E.g., close-Gitmo consitutional-law-lecturer Obama now gleefully blowing up would-be Gitmo detainees with rocket-launched TNT by video-game remote control; people who claimed you could not win an occupation occupying Wall Street; a media that dispatched a brigade of investigators to pour over Mrs. Palin taking one of her kids on a plane flight at Alaska tax payer expense having no time at all to look at $500M+ Solyndra fraud.

The hippies sold out over 3 decades, this current bunch, in less than 3 years.

Buck Ofama| 10.14.11 @ 7:23PM

Not "pour over"... PORE over.

Maybe you listened to Green Tambourine once too often.

POST American| 10.14.11 @ 10:13AM

-------------RELAX!

AS it's now ON RECORD that the entire
counter-culture was contrived and implemented
by the RIIA/CFR, Stanford Research, the Globalist CIA,
and the Rockefeller et al 'chair--IT--Abel' TAXFREE foundations
for the expressed purpose of cultural
degradation at the service of long term
standardization andEUGENICS agendas
-------they never has anything to sell out of.

AGAIN, it was called the 'counter' culture
and counted they certainly were.

Tim the Enchanter| 10.14.11 @ 2:31PM

Huh?

Mike Hawk| 10.14.11 @ 5:00PM

Full moon yesterday.

somnolence| 10.14.11 @ 10:22AM

Lest you forget, Rubin DID become a capitalist by the time he had checked out after being hit by a car. "We Built This City" is actually preferable to 99.9 percent of the plastic drek that comes out of Nashville, Music City U.S.A. these days. Believe me, true country music has been dead for many years, at least the traditional concept. No, The Airplane or Starship sounds damned refreshing in comparison to even anything Huey Lewis and his mediocre bunch ever recorded, not to mention Bono. Spitfire for instance, is a wonderfully lyrical, melodic album. Rolling Stone ceased to be a music magazine long ago, it would much rather help propitiate NORML.

gazinya| 10.14.11 @ 9:02PM

"I got tears in my ears, lyin' on my back cryin' over you. The words, 'I love you' have been washed from the blackboard of my heart." Country. Pure Country. I miss it too.

somnolence| 10.14.11 @ 10:24AM

I seriously doubt that Ken Kesey or Owsley ever met anyone from the Rockefeller crowd.

C. S. P. Schofield| 10.14.11 @ 10:24AM

For the ultimate indictment of the Baby Boomers, please-please-please read Joe Queenan's BALSAMIC DREAMS. Wonderful!

I was born in 1961. I am technically a boomer, but I have been trailing along, appalled, in the wake of their cultural tsunami my entire life.

As for rock musicians "Selling Out", since when is it "selling out" for a professional musician to make monetarily successful music? OK, some of the music will last, and the rest will (mercifully) fade from memory. This is different from the Classical era how exactly?

The notion that "artists" "sell out" when they do commercial work is a kind of cancer or mold that has infected our culture for entirely too goddamned long. (How long? Check out Pail johnson's BIRTH OF THE MODERN. It's fascinating).

As for We Built This City being the Worst Song...

Oh. My. God. It's mediocre. There are songs out there, dearly beloved by their target audience, that are sooooooo much worse!

Case in point? "There's a girl right next to you,
and she's just waiting for something to do."

Every time I hear that I, who despise the 'all heterosexual sex is rape' feminists, sympathise with them DEEPLY.

Stuart Koehl| 10.14.11 @ 10:39AM

You miss the point: the rockers of the sixties proudly stood up for NOT selling out, for not having a care for commercial viability, for not giving a flying. . . fig. . . about getting rich. They were all about message, and changing the world, dude. The reveled in being rebels, in writing music that ticked off the bourgeoisie, that too on the system.

But, in the end, they decided it was better to sell out and get rich than to keep doing what they were doing and die in principled obscurity.

Which is all well and good. Artists ought to be concerned whether their work is commercially viable. The problem is, those same sixties rockers continued to pretend that they were still the outsiders, still the rebels, when in fact they had become the staid, boring, status quo establishment.

You wrote: "The notion that "artists" "sell out" when they do commercial work is a kind of cancer or mold that has infected our culture for entirely too goddamned long." Quite right. What you failed to notice is nobody embraced this false mantra more than the rock musicians of the sixties. And so drug-addled or delusional they have become that they continue to believe it today, even while they turn out focus-grouped pablum.

It's a fine example of liberal cognitive dissonance.

C. S. P. Schofield| 10.14.11 @ 12:37PM

I think your point is well taken, but I think that I would like to see more awareness that any '60's group as well known as Jefferson Airplane had sold out long before We Built This City. The Recording Industry was not a part of the Arts and Crafts Movement; if you had a major record deal, you had "sold out".

Tom Wolfe has a lot to say about this in THE PAINTED WORD. He described the kind of avant guard artist who would come to chic Manhattan cocktail parties in a tuxedo top and paint spattered jeans ("I'm still a virgin....where's the champagne?").

Occam's Tool| 10.14.11 @ 1:45PM

The drummer for Queen was a Tory for a long, long time.

Stuart Koehl| 10.15.11 @ 6:38PM

All the members of Queen were interesting. One, I believe, has a doctorate in astrophysics and has published a book on the subject. But Queen was usually dissed by the hard rock crowd as being a "pop" band. Actually, they were amazingly talented and eclectic.

Claypoole| 10.15.11 @ 3:36PM

If the public will not shell out their own money--no subsidies, no NEA-- to buy your art to listen to, read, hang on the wall, wear, etc., then your art is no good. When artwork succeeds commercially, it is validated. The myth of the great unappreciated artist is exactly that--a myth.

Stuart Koehl| 10.15.11 @ 6:38PM

I actually think art was better when the artists had to eat with the servants. Beethoven ruined everything.

PaulyD| 10.14.11 @ 12:00PM

Aw, you're just a kid. What do you know?

Mr. LeMans| 10.14.11 @ 4:25PM

re: The notion that "artists" "sell out" when they do commercial work is a kind of cancer or mold that has infected our culture for entirely too goddamned long. (How long? Check out Pail johnson's BIRTH OF THE MODERN. It's fascinating).
==================================
Actually, Franz Liszt was derided in his day as well. The "modern" piano was a recent innovation, and he coaxed sounds and chords out of it that no one had ever heard before. Or at that
volume. Not unlike Eddie Van Halen with an electric guitar........

Mac Jehoff| 10.14.11 @ 7:08PM

Are yins anywhere near Le Sarte?

Claypoole| 10.15.11 @ 3:39PM

Mac, are you from the 'burgh?

somnolence| 10.14.11 @ 10:25AM

Rubin had his own nutritional supplement company, had cut his hair and shaved, making fun of his past once on SNL by the time he had died.

MikeBee| 10.14.11 @ 10:28AM

When you have 24/7 music stations, you have to fill the time with SOMEthing. Might as well be a bad song. I think that now, though, it's turned around quite a bit. Now, instead of playing a bad song as a fill-in once per hour, most of what's played sxcks. About once per hour, you get something that sounds decent.

somnolence| 10.14.11 @ 10:32AM

I enjoy rock, but I prefer ANYTHING Coleman Hawkins recorded, and would salvage that in preference to any Elvis, Beatles, or Airplane if headed to that proverbial desert island.

somnolence| 10.14.11 @ 10:37AM

"MacArthur Park" as played by Maynard Ferguson is wonderful.

cuban pete| 10.14.11 @ 3:20PM

Saw MF live in Detroit in 1975. He had just hired Peter Erskine as his drummer. Maynard was something. He took Pete Candoli up a notch.

Riff Raff| 10.14.11 @ 10:49AM

They say you can't win for losing. "We Built This City" proves you can.

Bob Grant| 10.14.11 @ 10:55AM

Would Obama allow a City to be built on Rock and Roll?

Considering what he's doing to Gibson Guitar Company I'd say no.

Obama hates guitars. Obama Hates Rock and Roll.

Jack von Bauer| 10.14.11 @ 11:03AM

Well Chicago is built on Crock and Dole.

Steve A| 10.14.11 @ 11:06AM

Jack, way funny!

Jack von Bauer| 10.14.11 @ 11:46AM

Steve -- all Obama is saying is give peas a chance.

JimBob7| 10.14.11 @ 1:23PM

Imagine whirled peas!

Jack von Bauer| 10.14.11 @ 3:29PM

Whirled peas!

Isn't that what beauty peageant contestants crave.

Bob Grant| 10.15.11 @ 2:11PM

Hah,

Whirled Peas has too many calories for beauty pageant contestants.

I think Whirled Peas is what Linda Blair Threw up in The Exorcist.

Brian B| 10.14.11 @ 11:05AM

We Built This City is quite awful but it's not even that groups worst song.
Granted it's from the 70's but Ride the Tiger is not only musically egregiously revolting, it's the worst kind of Maoist paean imaginable.

Skippy| 10.14.11 @ 1:05PM

That classic is from the Paul Kantner period.
He was SOOO into faux Marxism, and SOOO anti-establishment.
Hilarious in retrospect.

Bill| 10.14.11 @ 5:59PM

Blows Against the Empire, perhaps the hands-down worst concept album ever made.

Hijack the starship!

Jack von Bauer| 10.15.11 @ 11:28AM

You mean 'Blows Against the Empire' both blows and sucks!

Steve| 10.14.11 @ 11:51AM

Indeed, music is in the ear of the beholder. I actually kind of like Glenn Frey's solo stuff. Nice saxophone on You Belong to the City in fact. It's interesting too to see the different things that people hate. One person comments that Bono isn't any good, but I love U2. I think they make some great sounding music and Bono has a great rock and roll voice. I love the Pretenders too. I think Chrissie Hynde may be one of the best female rock singers I've ever heard - her politics are atrocious, but I absolutely love her singing voice - again, that's all taste. Those who disagree with me are welcome to, but if you do, don't assume it's because I'm musically illiterate - I'm not the world's greatest guitarist by any means, but at risk of bragging I am a very good rock guitarist as well as an Atkins/Travis fingerstylist...

Brian Mc| 10.14.11 @ 5:54PM

"...And I still...haven't found...what I'm whining for..."

Kingofthenet| 10.14.11 @ 11:55AM

I actually like 'We built this city', I don't care if my musicians are 'sellouts' or 'Druggies' or 'Gay' just create a song that has rhythm and good vocals, the lyrics actually sound a bit punk rockish, fine by me. Don't get me wrong I much prefer 'Pink Floyd' or others who craft their lyrics with care, but everything doesn't need to be heavy or meloncoly. You got 'Journey' the DEFINITION of a 'corporate' made band, singing GREAT lyrics, so what, not to mention IMHO the Beetles sounded better, when they decided to stop touring and instead turned out 'Studio' Albums that at the time wouldn't be possible to do live(They could easily do it now)

Occam's Tool| 10.14.11 @ 1:47PM

We expected you would like "We Built This City," and the "Supergroup" Asia, and Rupert Holmes, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Right Said Fred and Napoleon the XIV, King.

Stay consistent, Baby.

Kingofthenet| 10.15.11 @ 12:27PM

Yeah, me and VLAD have a 'Private' performance of Asia, than we plot to take over the WORLD.

Bob Grant| 10.14.11 @ 2:08PM

I bet you caught at least one Debbie Gibson show at a mall.

Tell me I'm wrong.

skip| 10.14.11 @ 2:34PM

Kingofthesleepsinmommysbasementunderthetotallybitchinfreddiemercuryblacklightposter

Deborah D | 10.14.11 @ 12:08PM

"The song is a sonic evocation of a whole generation's phony idealism." It wasn't a whole generation who made up these idealistic, commune-living, lefty-wackos. Jane Fonda -- not a boomer. Grace Slick -- not a boomer. Abbie Hoffman -- not a boomer. Eldridge Cleaver -- not a boomer. These people were born in the 1930's! Please don't paint all boomers with the wackos who led the antiwar movement and other crazy stuff...
SOME boomers followed their lead. MOST didn't. These folks are the generation BETWEEN the "Greatest" and the Boomers -- they just don't have a name. Most boomers went to college, got jobs, got married, had children. Most are still working. Please check the birthdates -- boomers begin in 1946, end in 1964 -- Clinton and Bush are the first wave. Most of these people you've listed have ten years on them and 20 years (at least) on a huge portion of the boomers.

Kingofthenet| 10.14.11 @ 1:13PM

Protesting against the war in Vietnam, wasn't crazy. The WAR was crazy.

Skippy| 10.14.11 @ 4:26PM

Right on, man.
Of course, a few million SE Asians dead at the loving hands of the Ho Chi Minh fan club was, like, a drag, man.
Oh well...don't bogart that joint!

Doctor Right| 10.14.11 @ 12:29PM

Did the Hippies really "sell out"?

It's an interesting question. To answer it, you need to question the whole premise of "Hippies" to begin with.

The 60's counter-culture movement was a sham from the beginning.

"Free love" movements have been advocated as far back as the 1700's, along with socialist utopian ideals. These sons-and-daughters-of-privilege, whose fathers fought on the beaches of Normandy, Pelelieu, etc, were ever involved in anything remotely original is laughable. Their entire "rebellion" was based on nothing other than
sheer boredom with the prosperity and security that their parents provided for them in World War 2.

Having no REAL challenges to grapple with, they simply decided that the system their parents created was horrible, and sought to destroy it. This is no surprise , either, nor is the fact that many of the 60's leading "rebels" came from very well-off families in the northeast and mid-west. Wealth and prosperity combined with a lack of purpose inevitably lead to nihilism and self-destructive behavior.

Oh, sure...the "60's generation" tries to piggy-back onto the struggle for Civil Rights, but truth be told, they were far more interested in the fashionable appeal of "the struggle" than in the actual nitty-gritty work of gaining civil rights for black Americans.

The TRUE inheritors of the "60's generation" are the aimless, clueless squatters currently "occupying" a small park near Wall Street and spouting inanities about the evils of "corporatism" and capitalism, all the while updating their "friends" on Face Book about "the struggle" with their new iPHONES.

Listening to these deluded fools is no different than listening to old news reports from the 60's. The ignorance they parrot sounds remarkably like the drivel that used to flow from the mouths of Jerry Rubins, Abbie Hoffman, and Bill Ayers.

And the contrast doesn't end there. Most of these "protesters" are 20-somethings born into a prosperous, safe, post-Cold War America. With no real struggle threatening their existence (except terrorism, for which they blame George W. Bush), they've glommed onto another fake one.

The difference is that unlike the 60's generation, today's young malcontents are egged-on by the establishment, up to and including the President of the USA.

So...sell-outs? Naaaah. There was nothing to sell-out. It was an age of extreme vanity and precocious posturing. Most of them were more into 'sex. drugs, and rock-n-roll" than changing the world, anyway.

Kingofthenet| 10.14.11 @ 1:17PM

You know when it come to Islamists it's 180 Degree opposite. The Muslim Radicals parents were 'moderate' in faith and action, the kids wanted to create a 'pure' Fundamentalist faith, Bin laden, most of the 9/11 hijackers were smart middle class and above people who could have lived a very nice life.

Ground Control| 10.14.11 @ 5:02PM

Wow! Well said. And I agree completely.

Buck Ofama| 10.14.11 @ 12:51PM

These old hippie fools never "sold out"; they never really fully believed in anything other than self-aggrandizement of one form or another.

Whether it's wailing about war, saving the whales, protesting and whimpering on Wall St, or bitching about the imaginary god-given sacrosanct right to kill babies, it's all based on self-driven purposes.

All is vanity under the sun.
Hippies have more vanity than others.
Ovomit has more vanity than the set of all hippies.

Bob Grant| 10.14.11 @ 2:11PM

Look it. Let's cut to the chase. There's no such a thing as a male hippie. Those guys just did what had to be done to get laid.

Riff Raff| 10.14.11 @ 3:16PM

Apparently, it worked.

Herb| 10.14.11 @ 5:41PM

I remember early in 1973 when the draft was ended and the protest movement instantly withered on the vine, that somebody summed up the counterculture and antiwar movements in a single sentence: "You know, a lot of guys joined the revolution just to get laid."

No doubt true with the OWS freaks as well. Only the technology has changed. FWIW, I'm a Vietnam vet who never went in for that sixties garbage. And the only purpose rock music ever served for me was to watch girls dancing to it.

Dave Williams| 10.14.11 @ 1:09PM

The first plonking chords of Elton John's "Benny and the Jets" has me lunging to change stations in a nanosecond. WAY worse than the Starship song, although that's pretty crappy, too...and a special heartbreak for me, since I had a major crush on Grace Slick. Ah well, life goes on...

Ground Control| 10.14.11 @ 2:57PM

Hate that song. And watching Katherine Heigl and James Marsden "perform" it in "27 Dresses" was torture.

Jack von Bauer| 10.15.11 @ 11:25AM

Wouldn't mind being Benny to Heigl's impressive jets though.

Aces and Eights| 10.14.11 @ 2:55PM

I guess the biggest problem I have with Starship’s (aka “Jefferson Airplane”, aka “Jefferson Starship” taken incongruently from the 1960’s Star Trek) grandly annoying song (and I know people who STILL love to hear it) is its underlying chutzpah. Let’s face it, despite the lyrics of “We Built This City” (e.g. San Francisco), Starship never actually “built” anything, much less a City, and this particular city dates back almost 200 years BEFORE Rock and Roll. So what is Starship claiming here? I know, it’s a pop song, and pop songs don’t have to make sense, but what’s the point? Was the modern San Francisco “built” by the drugged out leftovers of the Haight-Ashbury? Was this formerly grand city re-“built” by a lazy, non-productive subculture of drop-outs? Then again, perhaps Grace Slick and Mickey Thomas are the “true” architects of today’s San Francisco! Perhaps Starship should re-release “We Built This City” again today, when its lyrics may have some relevance and accuracy. One can visit San Francisco and see just what a subculture of freaks can do TO a city, instead of for it. Perhaps this song has an all new meaning in what a City “built” on rock and roll really looks like after 4+ decades. Not a pretty sight.

Mazzuchelli| 10.14.11 @ 5:54PM

It's not rational to simply vote one song as the worst. We Built This City was just one of many tied for that position. I still listen to cuts from Surrealistic Pillow. When it first came out, I was in grade school and heard it on Wolfman Jack's show on AM radio. I asked my Mom about her voice since she carried no vibrato. As I got older, the songs sounded better. Luckily I was raised by an unabashed and honest music lover so love everything from Tchaikovsky, Prokoviev to all the Big Bands through to Marty Robbins, Stan Getz, Santana, Cindy Lauper and a lot of stuff in between especially the '80s and including disco. I don't get hip hop/rap at all outside of a couple of novelty songs also on the Zune, U can't touch this, Walk this way, Funky Cold Medina. I wouldn't recognize a Lady Gaga song if I heard one. Thankfully that's where classic rock, Bluegrass Junction and the Zune comes into play.

Kingofthenet| 10.15.11 @ 12:33PM

The funny think is I 'Heard' a Woldman Jack' Broadcast recently, it's called 'Moonbounce' ...basically all those super powerful AM stations like WABC in NYC have been sending their radio waves into DEEP space at the speed of light, sometimes they hit something, like a large astroid or a planet somewhere and a few minutes of some early 80's broadcast gets reflected to the earth and is receivable on any radio, quite cool.

Kingofthenet| 10.15.11 @ 12:35PM

check it out:

http://www.wackradio.com/moonbounce/index.htm

Mazzuchelli| 10.14.11 @ 6:01PM

Aces, great points. The closing song at Candlestick after Giant's games for many years was Journey's "Lights", a beautiful rock ballad homage to San Francisco. When I brought a group to see the Giants at the new stadium a few years back, they played We Built This City. As a 13-year inhabitant of "The City", I can tell you, the hippies definitely got what they paid for in that city and in most of the rest of the state. I am now happily ensconced in fly-over country and have seldom looked back.

CalMark| 10.14.11 @ 6:27PM

From first to worst, hero to zero. Wow.

I always liked "We Built This City." In late 1985, it seemed to be playing constantly on the pop stations--you couldn't avoid it. Music is a matter of taste. And I'll take 80s pop any day: upbeat and often silly, pure entertainment.

Lizard King| 10.14.11 @ 6:39PM

Overly self serious hippies selling out aside, one must admit the '60's and '70's DID give us a legacy of some really kick ass roots rock music. Even though an homage to cannabis, Humble Pie's, "30 Days in the Hole" is but one example of basic, hard driving, bluesy rock that pays due respect to rock's genuine roots in Mississippi Delta Blues!

JimP| 10.14.11 @ 7:24PM

Groan. Another Gen-Xer whining about the Baby Boomers. The entire generation was not a bunch of idealistic, war protesting, radical chic, socialists who idolized Che only to sell out as soon as Nixon ended the draft. The phony idealist sell outs were the radical chic socialist war protestors.

Cleaver, Fonda and Hoffman weren't Boomers. All were born a decade before the baby boom started. The big time lefties in Congress are all pre-Boomers too. The quintessential Boomer protestors are the Clintons, but they and their faux idealist co-horts do not represent the majority of Boomers. Gen-Xers and others need to get over their bigotry of blaming everything on Boomers . The people the author is speaking about are former hippie, draft dodging, war protesting, faux-socialist hypritical @$$holes who happened to be born during the 'Boom'. We Boomer Vietnam Vets have been hating them for 40+ years, but can make distinctions between a Boomer and a dirty hippy scum b@g turned fascist money grubber once there was no danger of them getting drafted. Sorry, but it had to be said. So, sin loi.

Deborah D | 10.16.11 @ 5:33AM

Thank you, JimP, and thank you for your service.

JimP| 10.16.11 @ 8:25PM

Thank you for your kind words, Deborah.

Buck Ofama| 10.14.11 @ 7:31PM

In future, the stupid song will have been re-cut.

It will be something along the lines of:
"We fvcked this city with hoax and chains."
Or
"We build dees ceety on beans y rice."
Or
"We built thith thitty by thucking ath."
etc.

Rocky| 10.14.11 @ 10:09PM

Oh for heaven's sake...another game of one-up-manship by Blender magazine (whoever that is) and the author. Jefferson Airplane/Starship will be long remembered (and not for bad music) after DJ Flynn and Blender magazine are in the dustbin. We Built This City is better than any pop tune in the last 15 years. "Ya gotta be wise, ya gotta be cool, ya gotta be blah blah blah"...what crap. Lyrics today are awful and all-about-me-me-I-I-I. Why do so many FM stations frequently have 80s week? Answer...To boost their listeners tally because the music in general is UP and good. I'll take the 80s so-called sellouts any day over today's music. As far a being a sell out...last I checked we all need paychecks to live. They made their statements and yes they "sold out". So what...their music will endure because it's good. Enough of the put-down of Grace Slick. She was the coolest woman in pop music of the 60s bar none. In her day ankle-biters like the author and Blender magazine wouldn't have touched her. How about some respect for what she and Airplane achieved...it's so easy to sit back and judge now on the trajectory their careers took. Again I say, let's see how well the careers of Blender and Flynn go. Good luck!

Rocky| 10.14.11 @ 10:11PM

POST American| 10.14.11 @ 10:55PM

---------Getting beyond the '60's-70's Show'
and putting down the sports, porn and wampum----

THOSE interested in having a cultural
moment as we sit in the very midst of the
FUKISHIMA world nuclear DEPOP OP
cover up----

DO DOWNLOAD:

-----------------------'IKIRU'------------------------
a 1952 film by master Akira Kurosawa

It deals with a middle-aged bennie
worshipping bureaucrat who has to face eternity.

His story is every one of us -------in 2011
RED China-Globalist betrayed POST America.

---franchise slum Hollywood never even
comes close------------EVER!

disheartened| 10.15.11 @ 1:52AM

I think it should be embarassing that so many of the contributors to the comments above are so well versed in the pop culture of the 80's and since.

Doesn't pop culture equal pablum?

From the comments I read, some people above appear as if they could discuss these themes, singers, bands, record labels, lyrics, bios for drummers in the bands, top 40, first MTV videos, movies of that time period -- for hours on end.

Where are you spending your -- finite -- time?

How -- are you spending (squandering?) your time?

Peculiar. Most of you want to distance yourself from the cultural decay that is drowning us. You decry the filth of our day and the manifestations of it like OWS demo participants. You fret about the impending decline in your AMSPEC blog comments weekly. Yet you've been aiding, abetting, encouraging, writing about, and funding the culture/society decay all along.

Will| 10.15.11 @ 6:58AM

Zooming right along, I'm suprised nobody's mentioned "Rage Against The Machine"

How funny is that?

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Kingofthenet| 10.15.11 @ 12:47PM

Very Bizarre spam, Although totally appropriate for an Anal Exam on this site...LOL

bluecollarbytes| 10.15.11 @ 3:58PM

Grace slick proves she still is, by turning "painter", and I believe her smudges may be available for purchase.

solidground| 10.15.11 @ 6:57PM

People still read Rolling Stone? That's like wiping your rear and then checking the results for information and inspiration.

Richard Baker| 10.15.11 @ 7:25PM

How about "Feelings" as the worst? It was played and done and re-done for years. YAAAAAH!

general summerall| 10.15.11 @ 9:40PM

My kill me if I ever hear it again song is not Honey, or Feelings, but an old late 60s stinko Abraham, Martin, and John [and Bobby was added later]. Terrible sentimental goopie opus.

POST American| 10.15.11 @ 10:44PM

---------------------FINAL WORD-----------------------

--------------------'IKIRU' (to Live)---------------------
----(by film making master Akira Kurosawa)----

About EUGENICS, corrupt and scuzzy
Masonic power formations, 'bennie worship',
the genuine adventure of the human soul
--------------mortality and ETERNITY itself.

AS the FUKISHIMA world nuclear disaster
and DEPOP OP goes into its 8th air-brushed
month --and as weaponized vaccines from our
childhood 'kick in' --as 3rd generation
EUGENISTS giiggle at the helm
---------DO download

------------------------'IKIRU'----------------------------

IT will stir the 'IT' in you...

REALLY

Richard Baker| 10.16.11 @ 6:08AM

POST American:
Am I going to have to sacrifice a goat on your doorstep? After all, we Masons are devil worshipers, aren't we? What a loon you are. You truly need professional help, don't you know?

Kelly| 10.16.11 @ 1:19PM

Hilarious. However... I think I disagree with most of the article. Airplane is one of my favorite bands, only because of Grace Slick. I have read quite a bit about her. Sure she's a drunk and washed up drug user. She said what was on her mind. Most of JAs songs aren't really that political. A few, maybe, but at the same time you didn't see her pulling a Jane Fonda. Yeah, they may have sold out a little in the eighties. We all sell out. Our ideas from decade to decade clearly mutate into something different than we originally believed. I am very conservative and I am against all this occupy crap, but at the same time there is plenty of corporate cronyism. To say there isn't is naive. Nothing wrong with a song with some lyrics that disagree with corporate America. Pretty sure there are other songs more worthy of judgment.

A.M. Mallett| 10.16.11 @ 3:36PM

That is one awful mess of a song but is must have made them some MONEY!!!

A.M. Mallett| 10.16.11 @ 3:36PM

OPh .. and that reminds me ... mony mony

Skippy| 10.16.11 @ 4:40PM

"Total eclipse of the heart"
Kill. Me. Now....

discouraging word| 10.16.11 @ 10:30PM

At last - I have cracked the code. Have long wondered about the age, education, limited vocabulary and strong reliance on four letters words memorized from public bathroom walls exhibited by many of these posters..

Anyone who has given over 40 years of brain space to lyrics from the sixties can't have much else on his mind.