| "We Built This City" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single by Starship | ||||
| from the album Knee Deep in the Hoopla | ||||
| B-side | "Private Room" (Instrumental) | |||
| Released | August 26, 1985[1] | |||
| Recorded | 1984−1985 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 4:53 (album version) 4:49 (single version) | |||
| Label | Grunt, RCA | |||
| Songwriter(s) | ||||
| Producer(s) |
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| Starship singles chronology | ||||
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| Audio sample | ||||
"We Built This City" | ||||
| Music video | ||||
| "We Built This City" on YouTube | ||||
"We Built This City" is the debut single by American rock band Starship, from their 1985 debut album Knee Deep in the Hoopla. It was written by English musicians Martin Page and Bernie Taupin, who were both living in Los Angeles at the time, and was originally intended as a lament against the closure of many of that city's live music clubs.
The song peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Outside the United States, "We Built This City" topped the charts in Australia and Canada, peaked inside the Top 10 of the charts in Germany, the Republic of Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland, the Top 20 on the charts in Belgium, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and the Top 30 of the charts in Austria and the Netherlands.
The song has gained significant scorn, both for the inscrutability of its lyrics (notably the line "Marconi plays the mamba"), and for the contrast between the song's anti-corporate message and its polished, "corporate rock" sound. It topped a 2011 Rolling Stone poll of worst songs of the 1980s by a wide margin, and the magazines Blender and GQ both called it the worst song of all time.
The album's title, Knee Deep in the Hoopla, is taken from a lyric in the first verse of this song.[3]
- ^ "FMQB" (PDF). p. 30.
- ^ Breihan, Tom (November 9, 2020). "The Number Ones: Starship's "We Built This City". Stereogum. Retrieved August 6, 2023.
...they turned "We Built This City" into a big, blaring synth-rock song with an ultra-bouncy beat...
- ^ "We Built This City On Rock and Roll". Oddculture.com. Archived from the original on May 7, 2015. Retrieved August 12, 2016.