Song #584: "We Built This City" by Starship

Date: Nov 16, 1985
Weeks: 2

Well, this is going to be a tough one. I've heard this song trashed up and down the Internet. It's an objectively terrible song, emblematic of everything that was wrong with cheesy synth-pop-rock in the 1980s. The problem for me is this: This was my first favorite song, and I still have warm feelings for it.

It's guilty of all the worst sins of 80s music. The synth keyboards blare in both the treble and the bass. The drums are primarily that echoing 80s drum I've complained about before. The guitars are also at their most blaring. The singers are fairly androgynous; it's hard to even tell Grace Slick's voice apart from Mickey Thomas unless you know the song. And yet it all manages to work together to create a cohesive whole. The song is so bold and unapologetic and unafraid to be an 80s pop-rock song that I can't help but like it still. I complained about the music for "Sara" (#591), but that was using many of these same sounds in a soft song, and it was incongruous and felt fake. This song isn't trying to be soft. It's just trying to be rock and roll, albeit in a gentle, synthesized 80s kind of way, and the enthusiasm is infectious.

The enthusiasm for what, I'm not sure. I have never understood the lyrics, and I still don't. They're utter nonsense. Songfacts has a wacky theory: "a cry of rebellion against a corporation trying to ban rock and roll in an imaginary future." Yes, the politics and culture of the 1980s was so friendly to popular music that they had to go pick an imaginary fight. And not communicate it very clearly. "Who rides the wrecking ball into our guitars?" Is this that classic evolution-of-metaphor problem? Let me see if I can trace it. "Someone is destroying music" expands to "Who is wrecking our guitars?" expands to "Who's taking a wrecking ball to our guitars?" expands to "Who rides the wrecking ball into our guitars?" The result is a flowery line that is so far removed from the original metaphor that all meaning has been lost.

The bigger lyrical problem is the chorus and title. "We built this city on rock and roll." That's almost certainly untrue. No cities were founded or built because of rock and roll. Am I wrong here? Are there any cities that were built or even expanded because of rock and roll? Music is big in Nashville, but that's mostly country music. Las Vegas boomed because of musical performances, but that was all kinds of music. Seattle boomed in the 90s because of grunge rock, but this song is from 1985. That hadn't happened yet. And most of the bigger cities in the world were big before rock and roll came along. Maybe it's Memphis? Elvis presumably drew rock and roll music to Memphis, even if Memphis isn't that big a city. Or maybe they mean that theoretical future city trying to ban rock and roll, but they don't bother to explain it. But whatever. The lyrics are nonsense and I don't care. Maybe this song is the reason I don't hold nonsense lyrics against a song, because I loved it even though I could never understand the meaning.

My verdict: Like it. It's a fun pop song, and a genuinely good product of its era. Maybe I have too much nostalgic affection for the song to view it objectively, but I still think it's good, anyway.

Song #591: "Sara" by Starship

Date: Mar 15, 1986
Weeks: 1

As I review more and more songs, I'm finding every era contains at least one recurring trope that really bugs me. In the 80s, it's the style of drum that gets used here. It's loud, it fills the space between beats with reverb, and it's inappropriately placed in otherwise soft songs. What is it with that drum? Is there a name for it? I always think of it as the "Born in the U.S.A." drum (mostly because of this old Conan O'Brien bit). It works in Springsteen's song, but it doesn't work nearly as well in a softer song like this.

This song's music is so cheesily sincere that it's hard to take it seriously. Soft, gentle keyboards provide most of the music, there's an occasional muted sax, and then there's an electric guitar. Much like the drums, the electric guitar seems like the result of an inability to commit to a gentle soft song, resulting in something that tries to be soft and hard at the same time and fails to successfully be either. This song might work better acoustically. (Yep. Thanks, Youtube cover artists)

The vocals have the same cheesy sincerity problem. Most of it isn't too bad, but the bridge gets pretty painful when they add in the lead singer backing himself up with a squeaky breaking voice. I guess they're trying to make him sound emotional, but the self-backup effect sounds far too fake. This track is simply overproduced.

The lyrics are also pretty goofy. The message is that even when you know a relationship needs to end, you're not necessarily happy about it. But this is communicated in the most overdramatic way possible. "We're fire and ice, the dream won't come true." You mean you're too different to get along? There's poetic license, and then there's a metaphorical fantasy epic.

Then there's "storms are brewing in your eyes." I've never really understood that line, until I finally watched the video a couple times. In the video, the titular Sara leaves the singer, and for some reason he flashes back to when a tornado destroyed his childhood home. It took me a couple views before I caught on to the metaphor of a breakup devastating him the way a tornado devastates a house. It's definitely not a point in the song's favor that you need to see the video to interpret the lyrics of the song.

My verdict: Don't like it. I liked this song when I was younger. I guess I thought it was deep. But I think I've matured too much to see depth in this song, and time has not been kind to the instrumental choices.