[Today: A musical endurance test...]
Starship’s Knee Deep In The Hoopla is the Pet Sounds or What’s Going On of lousy albums – it may not top anyone’s list of the worst records ever released, but it has to be in every top ten compiled on the subject. Jefferson Airplane became Jefferson Starship in the early 70’s, and then turned into Starship when founder Paul Kantner left the group in the mid-80’s. Starship played a synth-heavy brand of pop schlock that featured watered-down melodies and clichéd lyrics, and except for Grace Slick (more on her later) it had no relation to the earlier versions of the band.
Lead single ‘We Built This City’ is so bad, so diabolically reminiscent of crappy 80’s FM radio, that it’s almost salmonella-inducing. It’s easily the worst song ever written about San Francisco, but because this is the 80’s we’re talking about, it of course became the first song by any version of this band to go to #1. The self-congratulatory lyrics would be hard to swallow coming from the Airplane, but from Starship this qualifies as almost psychotic self-aggrandizement. Really Starship, you think San Francisco was built on your weak synthesizer hooks and Grace Slick’s tuneless shriek? Rarely does music anger me to the point of violence, but… well, just watch yourself around me for the rest of the day.
Predictably, Knee Deep… is a wall-to-wall mess that qualifies as a musical endurance test at only 41 minutes running time. The album’s other #1 hit (of course) is the treacly ballad ‘Sara’ – a song who’s mere mention has undoubtedly lost me dozens of readers permanently. I wish I could say that tracks like ‘Hearts Of The World (Will Understand)’ and ‘Love Rusts’ are hidden gems that help balance out this album. But I can’t say that. Starship is knee-deep in something here, but what they’re calling hoopla sounds and smells a lot like horsie poop to me.
Listen: We Built This City
Tags: Grace Slick, Knee Deep In The Hoopla, Paul Kantner, San Francisco CA, Starship, We Built This City
16 July 2009 at 1:19 pm |
well, I just spent 10 minutes of my life thinking about this horrible record. thanks. :-P gawd – even the cover art looks like ‘jazzercise’…
16 July 2009 at 4:48 pm |
‘We Built This City” just might be my Most Hated Song of all-time. Tied with Nazareth’s ‘Love Hurts’, BTO’s ‘Taking Care Of Business’ and Jesus Jones’ ‘Right Here Right Now’ (the last of which has more power than any other song in history to work itself into my brain and not leave for days.)
On another note, when I started college and lived in the dorms freshman year, there was this f’n guy who had presumably just seen this tour and he wore the f’n shirt like 3 times a week. On the back was HOOPLA TOUR in roughly 750 pt type. Still makes me angry just thinking about it.
16 July 2009 at 4:49 pm |
Well, guess what song’s in my head now. F#@K !!!!!
16 July 2009 at 5:20 pm |
Apologies are in order. It really wasn’t my intention to get that crap stuck in anyone’s head, even if that’s a pretty predictable outcome of this post.
For a long time on this blog I’ve stayed positive and focused on albums I love, but I have to be honest – figuring out new ways to say “this album is great” gets a little tiring, so it’s a nice change of pace for me to be able to drop the boom on some bad records. As we all remember from high school, it’s much more fun to be mean than it is to be nice…
16 July 2009 at 7:08 pm |
“We Built This City” was the theme of my senior prom. As if that wasn’t horrible enough, do you have any idea how much bad 80’s music is on the radio these days? Too damn much I’ll tell ya that! Dead iPod and no cds. It was a painful experience in LA traffic today. Man, I hate that song!
17 July 2009 at 3:42 am |
This post should be saluted for drawing out that much anger out of Furr, which is something of an accomplishment. Appropriately though because the guy Furr describes in his dorm rockin’ the tour shirt sounds like a real d-bag.
If you can’t get the song out of your head, just replace it with Homer Simpson’s version if you were lucky enough to catch that episode…the only possible way that song can bring a smile to your face.
17 July 2009 at 4:53 am |
Actually it was the Jesus Jones tune that I couldn’t get out of my head immediately after writing. But that’s since been replaced by a duet between Jesus Jones and We Built This Shitty.
Just waiting for Nazareth to come creeping in.
17 July 2009 at 7:36 am |
Just for you, Mr. F:
Love hurts, love scars,
Love wounds, and marks,
Any heart, not tough,
Or strong, enough
To take a lot of pain,
Take a lot of pain
Love is like a cloud
Holds a lot of rain
Love hurts, ooh ooh love hurts
Im young, I know,
But even so
I know a thing, or two
I learned, from you
I really learned a lot,
Really learned a lot
Love is like a flame
It burns you when its hot
Love hurts, ooh ooh love hurts
Some fools think of happiness
Blissfulness, togetherness
Some fools fool themselves I guess
Theyre not foolin me
I know it isnt true,
I know it isnt true
Love is just a lie,
Made to make you blue
Love hurts, ooh,ooh love hurts
Ooh,ooh love hurts
[guitar solo]
I know it isnt true,
I know it isnt true
Love is just a lie,
Made to make you blue
Love hurts, ooh ooh love hurts
Ooh ooh love hurts
Ooh ooh…
17 July 2009 at 8:33 am |
Why are you provoking him on his birthday? That’s not right.
17 July 2009 at 8:38 am |
Happy World B. Furr Day! It’s kind of like earth day, except it’s all about Furr instead of our planet…
Furr, consider the Starship review to be your gift, one day early. Your HOOPLA TOUR t-shirt is in the mail…
17 July 2009 at 8:34 am |
Clearly you’ve upset him, the post was from 5 am. He was probably up half the night w/ those shitty lyrics in his head.
17 July 2009 at 8:41 am |
Not sure what’s up with jo’s computer but she clearly is erroneous on her assessment of time and anger ratio
17 July 2009 at 8:43 am |
The time shown on this blog is always PST, regardless of where the comment is coming from.
Please – you know you were up half the night singing WE BUILT THIS CITY ON ROCK AAAAAAAAND ROLLLLLLLLLLL!
17 July 2009 at 8:59 am |
Still not possible. That would be 6:53 here and I want even awake yet. Weird.
17 July 2009 at 9:30 am |
Yep, there’s actually a weird kink in WordPress’ system that doesn’t account for daylight savings, so for half the year it’s actually PST + 1 hour. So a 4:53am timestamp on here means 7:53am central…
WE BUILT THIS… oh, never mind…
17 July 2009 at 10:40 am |
Question: “Who rides the wrecking balls into our guitars?”
Answer: Obviously the same asshole who replaced them with keytars and shoved an eight ball up your nose!