We Built This City

“We Built This City” by Starship is considered one of the worst songs to ever chart. Many critics claim that it makes no sense and is only popular because it sounds “catchy”. However, the song in reality has a very subtle meaning that rarely gets picked up on. The song is critiquing the music industry as a whole, using metaphors and imagery, claiming that it’s completely disregarding its roots and only using artists as a way of making money. The chorus of the song does so most cryptically. “Marconi plays the mamba/listen to the radio/Don't you remember/We built this city we built this city on rock and roll”. Marconi is a reference to Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor who is known for his work on long range radio transmissions. Mambas are a group of highly venomous snakes, some of the most deadly in the world. From this the first line can be inferred to be trying to say that all that’s being played on the radio is poison. With that worked out the next line is simple enough to work out, it’s just a call to actually listen to what is getting played. The last 2 lines are a plead to get people to recall what music used to be like to get them back to that quality. The first verse is
Where other songs sought only to reach out to the listener on an emotional level, whether through love, or anger, or anything else, this song was written to be an earworm that would inspire a nationwide change in the way music is considered, from kid Johnny who listened to his records and cassette tapes, to the fat cats on the top of the music industry who were seeking out only what was popular, the quick fashion for their profits. Whether this was a cover up by critics, or simply just to subtle for many to pick up on, this is an attitude that needs to change due to the true depth and meaning of this very catchy