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An oral history of "We Built This City," the worst song of all time (2016)


Turns out even the people who made it kinda hate it, too.

Dennis Lambert(executive producer): The Starship was one more act in a long line of artists I worked with who, if they weren't given up for dead, were thought of as being in a deep career hole. Martha Davis(vocalist, the Motels): As best I remember—and we're talking about the '80s, so I don't remember much—[Elton John lyricist] Bernie Taupin sent me the lyrics to “We Built This City” so I could write music to it. Stephen Holden(critic; ‘The New York Times,’ 1985): A compendium of strutting pop-rock clichés, Knee Deep in the Hoopla represents the '80s equivalent of almost everything the original Jefferson Airplane stood against—conformity, conservatism, and a slavish adherence to formula.

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