It would be great if the thread was long and not filled with one word responses of nothing. So I am going to try and keep conversations going. Feel free to explore a topic for yourself as well.
What is everyone's least favorite songs or song of all time?
THE HISTORY OF THE JEFFERSONS AND THE STARSHIPS AND THE AIRPLANESI remember a long while ago reading that a specific song was used to torture foreigners in the war by blaring it and leaving it on repeat for like days. That song is "We Built This City (On Rock and Roll)" and I concur that it is a god-awful song.
Now here's the kicker. The song was done by a band called Starship. That band was a spin-off of the band Jefferson Starship, which is a spin-off of the band Jefferson Airplane.
Jefferson Airplane, fronted by the legendary Grace Slick made some great songs like "Don't you Want Somebody to Love?" that became a resurgence hit after the Cable Guy movie dropped and became a cult classic.
Jefferson Airplane ALSO, led by Grace Slick, made this fucking masterpiece:
So, how is it that the origins of that band can somehow create the worst song ever made?
"After 1972, Jefferson Airplane effectively split into two groups. Kaukonen and Casady moved on full-time to their own band, Hot Tuna. Slick, Kantner, and the remaining members of Jefferson Airplane recruited new members and regrouped as Jefferson Starship in 1974, with Marty Balin eventually joining them."
So, after those songs are made, Slick sticks with Jefferson to become Jefferson Starship, and the other guys go and create a band, presumably fronted by these two guys:
Shortly thereafter, Grace Slick begins a relationship with Paul Kantner, and she gets even cooler when they write and release an album called "Blows Against the Empire" and this happens:
"On Blows Against the Empire, Kantner and Slick sang about a group of people escaping Earth in a hijacked starship. In 1971, the album was nominated for the prestigious science fiction prize, the Hugo Award, a rare honor for a musical recording."
It is VERY Psychedelic Rock, basically listening to some of it on youtube it's basically "this is the music I think of when I think of hippies getting stoned and listening to music to
experience it."
So, where does everything go from there? To Jefferson Starship, of course.
The continue to have some solid success, until they do a tour in Germany, and Slick, who is basically an alcoholic (you mean getting fucked up in the 60s all the time wasn't a great life choice?) eventually yells at German audiences condemning them for the Nazi stuff that happened 30 years earlier. So she's asked to leave the band.
The following year, without her, Jefferson Starship releases probably their biggest hit. This one:
Then, this happens lol
"In June 1984, Paul Kantner, the last remaining founding member of Jefferson Airplane, left Jefferson Starship. In October 1984, Kantner took legal action over the Jefferson Starship name against his former bandmates. In March 1985, Kantner settled out of court and signed an agreement that neither party would use the names "Jefferson" or "Airplane" unless all members of Jefferson Airplane Inc. (Bill Thompson, Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Jorma Kaukonen, and Jack Casady) agreed. Jefferson Starship briefly performed as "Starship Jefferson" while legal proceedings occurred, before settling on the shortened name "Starship"."
So now, there's multiple Jeffersons and Airplanes and Starships until finally there kind of isn't? And after all that, and Jefferson, sorry, Starship is looking to get another hit after being in the game for almost 20 years...
Band member Lambert says "Grace Slick was the matriarch of the group, and everyone was focused on making her happy. She gave me very specific marching orders: “I want to make hits.” She told me she wanted to tour, make a lot of money, and then retire. That's how she put it."
So, Grace set out to basically make music to make a shit load of money and get the fuck out of the game.
From another article: "The members of the band bickered a lot back then and had no shared vision of what the group should be doing."
Perfect! Let's make the shittiest hit of all time.
Enter Bernie Taupin. He was trying to establish a career away from his usual writing partner, Elton John.
Here are the songs Bernie Taupin has written:
Every good song by Elton John. Like seriously. Bernie Taupin is basically the "lyrics" of an entire music genre movement. Check out this list of absolute masterpieces:
Bennie and the Jets. The Bitch is Back. Candle in the Wind. Crocodile Rock. Don't Go Breaking My Heart. Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Levon.
Rocket Man. Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (literally became a Hockey Night in Canada institution for a long time). Tiny Dancer!
And in case you think Bernie Taupin only writes pop music, he helped Alice Cooper write the lyrics to his entire "From the Inside" record, about deranged folks in an asylum telling their individual stories of murder, drug and alcohol abuse, and split personalities. That ALBUM is a fucking masterpiece in its own right.
Nurse Rozette alone includes the incredible lyrics of:
Nurse Rozetta; I won't let her
Catch me peering down her sweater
Fantasizing silk suspender on her thighs
Nurse Rozetta make me better
Secretly my eyes undress her
Let me feel your tongue depressor
I'm suddenly twice my size
My pants are all wet inside
You read that and go "gross." Go listen to that song, it absolutely fucks.
Taupin saw how the Los Angeles live music scene was dying, and he tried to capture that in a song. His unfinished demo wound up in the possession of Austrian producer Peter Wolf (not the J. Geils Band dude), who added that infamous chorus and gave the song to Starship. A supremely cheesy music video, in which a statue of Abraham Lincoln comes to life and starts lip syncing to the song, made the song an inescapable MTV hit.
“I don't think anybody can take all the credit,” says Starship guitarist Craig Chaquico, “or all the blame.”
The song goes on to sell 1.1M records, gets certified platinum and has 4 number one hits.
In 1989, Jefferson Airplane reunites, releases an album, and then disbands and they never made music again.
Slick also had a daughter that played "Wilson's wife" on Home Improvement.
In 2016, Paul Kantner died and his former bandmates had lot's of nice things to say about him, like:
Peter Wolf (producer): There was a lot of hate inside the band. What was his name, the gentleman who just died? Paul Kantner. Paul [Jefferson Airplane's co-founder] was an old hippie who was not relevant anymore. Everyone wanted to go more modern, and he didn't want to. I was happy Paul left. He argued with everybody, and I hated that.
And now, without further ado, I present to you this fucking disaster shit-piece of a song:
MTV gave us a lot of good stuff, and it also gave us a lot of things that should be erased from history. But then it gave us Jersey Shore, so, forgiven?
