Agreed.
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How was We Built This City considered "bad?"
- Thread starter tall_guy1
- Start date
"We built this city on country music"... yeah, that could work for Nashville. Or maybe "We built this city on R and B" could work. "We built this city on adult contemp" not so much.... although if he were alive and doing radio today, the late great Dan Ingram would probably make and inside joke and make it sound good: "We built this city ... on CHR!"
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Building a city on bay fill was what actually happened, which worked until the next earthquake.
My vote for worst song of all time.
"I like to move it move it. You like to move it move it." Lol!
"I like to move it move it. You like to move it move it." Lol!
I don't like it because it's depressing.
Agreed. I have my own edit. 2:10 with the intro edited to 10 seconds.
As time goes on
I realize
Just what you mean
To me
And now
Now that you're near
Promise your love
That I've waited to share
And dreams
Of our moments together
Colour my world with hope of loving you
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I mean...it doesn't make me want to drink anti-freeze, but let's see if we can't cheer you up:
Color My World is nowhere near as sappy as “Superstar” by The Carpenters…
"Superstar" was edgy for the Carpenters at the time. It's a song written by Leon Russell and Delaney Bramlett based on a suggestion by Rita Coolidge about a groupie who can't wait for a band to come back to town so she can sleep with the rock star again.
Clearly, she's a kid who's been lied to ("Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby/You said you'd be coming back this way again...maybe")
In fact, the original recording, by Delaney and Bonnie, in 1969 was called "Groupie (Superstar)":
Richard Carpenter decided to record it after seeing Bette Midler perform it on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
He wanted no blowback from the fan base or problems with airplay in conservative markets, so he changed the lyric from "and I can hardly wait to sleep with you again" to "and I can hardly wait to be with you again".
Yikes….
It's amazing to look back to when we played these songs as currents. The sensitivity to lyrics just a bit off color was intense.
I recall debating whether to play songs like Let It All Hang Out.
Yet in 1967 in conservative Ecuador where on Good Friday we had to play classical music or sign off... we brought this back from France and played the heck out of it...
You don't need to know French to know what Serge and Jane were singing about.
"I love you... me neither" is the translated title. The translated lyrics are at
... including the lines:
I go, I go and I go
Je vais, je vais et je viens
Between your loins
Entre tes reins
I come and I go
Je vais et je viens
Between your loins
Entre tes reins
So true. I got my first job just as the FCC started getting serious about drug references in lyrics:
In reality, they were about four years late with that, but it caused ridiculous knee-jerk reactions. It took me half an hour to get the GM to understand that Wilson Pickett's "Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You" wasn't about marijuana.
Two years later, we were playing the long version of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side." Go figure:
Serge was an interesting character, even by French standards. Some of his other songs are just as provocative as that one, such as "Les Sucettes" ("Lollipops.") Then there is his reggae version of "La Marseillaise" (The French national antherm) which raised a few eyebrows.
I recall arriving in Phoenix to go to ASU while working for KWKW and hearing that song on KUPD, complete with a custom lyric that said,
And we got to Phoenix
And went to K-U-P_D
They played it a lot. KRIZ and KRUX would not touch it because KUPD had taken ownership.
And KUPD was 500 watts on 1060, KRIZ 1 kw on 1230 and KRUX 5 kw day and a lousy 500 watts at night on 1360. All were Top 40 and all got big numbers.
Since we're on the subject of drug-influenced lyrics, we can't forget this one!
It's a great story. Rita cut a version of it too. Her version is slower. There was a huge tour at the time called Mad Dogs & Englishmen. Joe Cocker was the headliner, then Delaney & Bonnie, and Rita Coolidge. Eric Clapton was in between bands, so he joined in. The Rita version I heard was recorded at the Fillmore, with Leon Russell on piano and Eric on guitar. Richard Carpenter took the song and added strings. He also cleaned up the lyrics. But I bet it was based on a true story. There was a lot of that kind of thing going on back then before AIDS.
Leon was involved with Rita at the time. He wrote the song Delta Lady about her. Always one of my favorites. "Cause your mine, me oh my, Delta Lady." Apparently a reference to a certain anatomical place and space. Because she is not from Louisiana.
I've always been surprised that "Walk on the Wild Side" made it to radio, especially with the periodic explosions of blue-nosed censoriousness that afflict American cultural life. It was about Andy Warhol's demimonde. But most listeners probably weren't aware that the song referred to people who really existed.
Speaking of the Velvet Underground, the real shocker I experienced was in the mid-1980s upon moving to Houston and discovering "Classic Rock 1070", KRBE, which often played selections from the Velvets' first album. Yes, that included "Venus in Furs", "I'm Waiting for the Man", "Heroin", and other descriptions of wholesome all-American activities, in glorious AM stereo. Yet I find "All Tomorrow's Parties" to be hauntingly beautiful.
OK, I'm not their greatest fan, but I do kind of like "Sunday Morning."