"Stupid song. But our producer said, ‘It’s a hit.’ And he was right!”: How a famous singer had a No.1 in the ’80s with a song she hated

Grace Slick first became famous as the singer for the Jefferson Airplane on classic, groundbreaking songs from the late ’60s such as Somebody To Love and White Rabbit.

But the biggest hits that Slick ever had were in the ’80s when the band had metamorphosed into soft rock act Starship.

And as she reveals in a new interview with The Guardian, she only sang those cheesy ’80s songs because she felt guilty for her drunken antics in previous years.

Starship’s three No.1 hits - We Built This City and Sara from 1985, and Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now from 1987 - all came from songwriters outside of the band. And for Slick, the worst of those songs was We Built This City, with its triumphant chorus: “We built this city on rock’n’roll”.

Starship - We Built This City (Official Music Video) [HD] - YouTube

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The lyrics for this song came from Elton John’s longtime writing partner Bernie Taupin, and as Slick tells The Guardian: “I thought they were ridiculous.

“There isn’t a city built on rock’n’roll! Los Angeles was built on oil and oranges and the movie business.”

Referring to Taupin, she adds: “He’s British, and London obviously isn’t built on rock’n’roll.

“Stupid song. But our producer said, ‘Yeah, but it’s a hit.’ And he was right.”

Asked why she would sing material she disliked, Slick replies: “I kind of had to because I was trying to make it up to the band.

“I’d been this wild, crazy-ass drunk. So to make up for it I was sober all through the ’80s … which was a mistake!”