Grace Slick had her own verdict on “We Built This City,” the Starship hit she sang with Mickey Thomas. In 2012, she said: “Oh you’re shitting me, that’s the worst song ever.”
The song spent 2 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1985. It also reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart, finished at No. 14 on the year’s Hot 100 chart and earned a Grammy nomination. It was Starship’s first single after the band dropped “Jefferson” from its name.
Blender put it at the top of its worst-songs ranking in 2004. Editor Craig Marks said it “purports to be anti-commercial but reeks of ’80s corporate-rock commercialism.” In 2011, Rolling Stone readers voted it the worst song of the 1980s.
Slick also said she “didn’t believe the lyrics” of any of Starship’s 1980s No. 1 hits. Even lyricist Bernie Taupin couldn’t explain one of this song’s best-known lines. When Thomas asked what “Marconi plays the mamba” meant, Taupin replied, “I have no fucking idea, mate.”
Thomas had his own answer to the magazine that ranked the song worst: “I’m still here and Blender’s not.”