my nominee for worst song of the 1980s. quite possibly one of the worst ever.

by the time the classic rock group jefferson airplane / jefferson starship had morphed into starship, times indeed had changed. for one thing, no one in the band was legally permitted to use the terms jefferson or airplane when they performed. that left them as simply starship: a band consisting of a bunch of guys around founding member grace slick (she with the haircut i’ve worn on and off for the past 30 years.)

anyway, everything about we built this city screamed of the bad, commercialistic state of the music industry in the mid-1980s. sure, the music industry is always commercial — but this song is like an emblem of that crass, homogenized, pre-digested pap that was served up to people… and sadly, they loved it. (at least, they did at the time.) the song speaks of los angeles, but the band allowed different radio stations to dub traffic reports over part of the song as it played to make it seem much more local. to ensure airplay, an MTV executive had a voice-over part in the song.

you might be interested in knowing that bernie taupin, sir elton john’s longtime musical collaborator, is partially responsible for this one. (bad, bernie!)

in 2004, blender magazine decided this to be the worst song of the 1980s, and i quite agree. one of the magazine’s contributors locked himself up and listened only to this song for a 24-hour marathon.  one wonders whether the powers that be ought to have considered this prior to interrogations at gitmo.

as an aside, i was always troubled by a particular part of the song:

Marconi plays the Mamba,
Listen to the radio
Don’t you remember?
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll!

thanks to the magic that is google, i now know the correct lyrics. but for years, i thought they were singing about a high school friend of mine. i couldn’t figure out for the life of me why they would have the nerve to sing marc cote (pronounced ko-tee) plays the mamba. listen to the radio. as an artist, he would never, EVER, allow himself to be attached to such a collosal trainwreck of a song. i am much relieved to know this to be true.

knee deep in the hoopla? i think they were knee deep in a completely different substance.

’cause there won’t be snow in africa this christmas…

i suspect there isn’t snow in much of africa, this christmas or any other. but in 1984, there also wasn’t a lot of food for people in ethiopia, which led to sir bob geldof and midge ure (of ultravox) to pen a song to raise money for their relief. a great idea, a generous idea, and yet a naive idea in hindsight, as no one knows whether the money ever for to the places it needed to go. not to mention the song just basically sucked.

no one said it better than morrissey:

The main reason I’m dangerous is because I’m not afraid to say how I feel. I’m not afraid to say that I think Band Aid was diabolical. Or to say that I think Bob Geldof is a nauseating character. Many people find that very unsettling, but I’ll say it as loud as anyone wants me to.

In the first instance the record itself was absolutely tuneless. One can have great concern for the people of Ethiopia, but it’s another thing to inflict daily torture on the people of England. It was an awful record considering the mass of talent involved. And it wasn’t done shyly — it was the most self-righteous platform ever in the history of popular music.

ah, st. moz…

anyway, it’s hard to talk about this one without including the video. you watch the video, and even someone heavily entrenched in ’80’s music ends up scratching her head: hmm… who the hell is THAT? there are plenty of gimmies: righteous bono and his mullet; sting with his sir lancelot hair; phil collins with a tiny vestige of his natural hair remaining; george michael with more makeup than a tranny; and of course, boy george, who looks like, er, well, boy george. after that, it begins to get a little murky. i know bananarama are the three girls in the front with very unwashed hairt… hmmm. who the hell ARE these people?

anyway, it’s christmas season now, so get ready to hear this one repeatedly. somehow, i think it will never go away. pity that.

turn around, bright eyes…

am i the only one who watches this video and gets creeped out by the voice that keeps repeating turn around? i keep waiting for the serial killer to pop out of somewhere. it’s bad enough tyler seems to be dreaming about the boys in her school. but the serial killer? eek. fortunately, there are people who took the video on and made it a bit less scary for people like me.

a must-see:

we have jim steinman, man behind meatloaf, to blame for this song. somehow, it wasn’t enough to spread the schmaltz just with the ‘loaf. or maybe the ‘loaf rejected this one… i don’t see anyone calling him bright eyes.

fun trivia factoid for you brooooce fans out there — mighty max weinberg plays drums on this one. yeah, i feel proud now, too.

oh, is THAT what the thing i’m shaking is called.

it’s difficult to pick just one debbie gibson song for the purposes of this post. lost in your eyes makes me weep but for reasons not intended by the artist. foolish beat reminds me of all the melodramatic crap i used to write and then hide away when i was about 15 years old. and electric youth makes me want to go out and touch a live wire, just to make it all stop.

but shake your love is probably the worst.  the chorus does not make musical sense to me. it sounds like she didn’t know how to end the chorus, and so she cuts it off. admittedly, the chorus is so overwhelming, i cannot actually remember the rest of the song. i think i probably blocked it out after awhile. how does it go again? wait. don’t tell me.

seriously, i will give deborah (that’s how she rolls these days) extreme props, though. she wrote and played and sang and danced. even if i didn’t like the package, she was the full package. britney and all the other musical wannabes that the disney factory creates don’t actually possess the talent that gibson has in her pinky.

(and secret guilty pleasure admittance: i like only in my dreams. some hooks are even too good for me to resist.)

happy thanksgiving day. for you, a real turkey.

you’re all too busy eating to read, anyway, so i’ll spare you the blather. besides, if you can’t tell why this song is so bad, you ought to have your ears revoked.

bon appetit!

no, you are not being rickrolled. though you might prefer that to be the case here.

throaty singer rick astley burst onto the music scene in 1987 with his monster hit never gonna give you up. his forgettable, sound-alike followups, like together forever, still litter easy listening stations and grocery store PA systems to this very day. he was produced by a UK machine known as stock aitken waterman — and when he left them, his career took a nosedive. sad about his career, but at least my ears were spared…for a time.

i still have nightmares of the time i spent in a windowless office on the second floor thanks in part to mr. astley. it was 1991, and i was working in education policy. (that was not the nightmarish part. i liked the work.) i shared said tiny office with a Ph.D candidate who was grumpy and cranky all the time. did i mention it was a small, windowless, and sometimes airless-feeling office? there was a library in the building, and at times, when i did not need to be near a phone, i would escape to the library for a sanity break.

anyway, the Ph.D candidate had a clock radio in the office. i like music in the background, so i didn’t mind in principle. however, as he was most certainly a southern boy, he liked playing the local country station, which i DID mind. seeing as he wasn’t going to play the late great 99.1 WHFS (which existed at the time), we made our peace and listened to easy listening. if i had a dime for every time i heard never gonna give you up, i would certainly have enough to have bought myself a very fine pair of bose noise cancelling headphones, i can tell you that.

(that year, i had to work on yom kippur. i fasted in that awful little room. and to further the punishment, i let the Ph.D candidate play the country station. oh, how i suffered for my sins.)

of course, now that the rickrolling phenomenon came about, astley is alive and well and showing up all over the place on the internet. like here.

(i suspect only my old pal leifer will get that one.)

i’m a danish, i’m a danish, rock me, i’m a danish!

okay, my friends katrin or m2k the super brain will have to translate that one for us. in the meantime, for us stupid americans who need things in english, behold the most popular of the late, great falco’s contributions to our musical heritage: rock me amadeus. not entirely sure what the hell the song is about other than the illustrious wolfgang amadeus mozart. yeah, he was great. yeah, he was talented. yeah, he was hot in the ’80s thanks to some feature film time.

but this song? how on earth did it become a bigger hit than der kommissar? (or, for you xenophobic amurikins, here’s the version we all know.) dk actually has a cool hook, even if no one knows even what the hell the english version is all about.

i did find out that falco, or Johann (Hans) Hölze, called himself falco after an east german ski jumper. he left the world tragically due to a horrible car crash. nothing good about that.

but this song? with all the offerings in 1986, this was not something to be remembered. and yet, here i am, remembering it.

i think i’ll just stick with the real thing and get rocked by it. to sleep, perhaps, but still.