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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bad rap, decent work, January 12, 2006
Starship caught a bad rap, even my own father, when I was about 9, asked "what the hell happened to Grace Slick to sing this crap" but it's a good album.
Grace WAS the oldest FEMALE vocalist with a #1 hit. When "We Built This City hit #1-she was 46 years and 17 days old. The previous record was Tina Turner from the year before (she was 45 years 10 months when "What's Love Got To Do With It" topped the charts). Then Grace broke HER OWN record in '87 with "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" at almost 48 years old!
To Cher's credit, she DID break the record in 1999.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
We built this city...on rock and rolllllllllllll!, June 25, 2005
Another high school memory comes from hearing Starship's irresistible and cheery "We Built This City," as my classmate, Brad Liscom, was really into Starship then. I had him copy that song and "Sara," the two singles that became the constantly revamped group's first #1 hits. What makes this album no hoopla are the 80's style synths, Mickey Thomas's soaring vocals and Craig Chaquico's fiery and grinding guitars. True, these made be considered the final surrender and incarnation of Starship into the pop mainstream, but that's what I grew up on.
"We Built This City" embodies the oppression the band feels by the corporate mindset and by police and other authorities, but also rock as the symbol of high school youth. Slick's lines of "Someone always playing corporation games/Who cares they're always changing corporation names" are sadly still relevant today. The mid-song DJ monologue also adds to the mix, with a reference to the Bay Area, Starship's home base, when Les Garland refers to San Francisco as the city that rocks and never stops. Two weeks at #1? Four would be satisfactory for this song, which unseated Jan Hammer's "Miami Vice Theme" before giving way to "Separate Lives" by Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin.
Two of the songwriters here include Bernie Taupin, Elton John's songwriting partner, Martin Page, who with Taupin wrote Heart's "These Dreams," and Peter Wolf (more on him later down).
"Sara, Sara, no time is a good time for goodbyes." Set to a steady drum machine, the bittersweet ballad "Sara," is bolstered by Chaquico's guitars and the keyboards, which lend to the sorrowful atmosphere. I recall the video, where Rebecca de Mornay played the title character, a pretty but shallow blonde temptress.
I got peeved when the third single, "Tomorrow Doesn't Matter Tonight," only reached #26. Maybe it was the video for the song, a solid electronic drum beat, Chaquico's solo, or the airy female vocals before the last bits of the choruses take over with a thundering sound, but I was quite taken with this upbeat number.
If the fourth single, "Before I Go," and certain songs throughout sounds like something from Heart's 1985 comeback, well, it's because Peter Wolf (no, not the J.Geils' Band lead singer) but a keyboardist did synth work on that classic album, on which incidentally, Mickey Thomas and Grace Slick did backing vocals on "What About Love." Anyway, this song sounds like a cross between "Nothin' At All" and the future "All I Want To Do" by Heart, with the constant backbeat drum machine and a catchy chorus. Its #68 showing was way too low. At least Top 20, come on!
If I were to choose a candidate for a fifth single, it'd be "Hearts of the World Will Understand," with prominent lead vocals by Slick. Perfect 80's pop, soaring harmony vocals, a mid-song monologue by Slick, and the intense drums and guitars of the group. Next up would be "Rock Myself To Sleep" with its pounding drums, hard-edged guitar chords, and also sung mostly by Grace Slick.
"Love rusts when it rains on romance/Hailstones heavy on this empty heart." Some bombastic synths pepper the somber ballad "Love Rusts," which is accompanied by airy synths and a host of backing vocalists, including Simon Climie of Climie Fisher fame, Martin Page, Ina Wolf, who co-wrote "Sara" with Peter Wolf, and Siedah Garrett, who sang with Michael Jackson on "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" from his Bad album. Some parts of this song have a moody and oppressive aura, due to the bass synths.
Where songs like "Find Your Way Back" and "No Way Out" showed Starship moving closer to the mainstream after years as Jefferson Airplane and then as Jefferson Starship, Knee Deep In The Hoopla finally has the group getting its laurels and being embraced by my generation, by me because of "We Built This City" and due to a sound similar to but less grinding than Heart. So thanks, Brad, wherever you are, for introducing me to them, because I built my collection on rock and rollllllllll.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
80's Pop That You Can Love And Hate At The Same Time, August 28, 2003
By A Customer
The strange thing about the songs on this album, which I am sure that most people who are Generation X can relate to, are that this is an album that you may have hated when it came out, but love today, due to the fact that the 80's were the last definitive decade of music in the 20th Century.When I first heard "We Built This City" on the radio, and found that Jefferson Starship had changed its name to Starship, I lamented the death of the 70's sound of this group, and thought that this song was obnoxious, repetitive and just plain stupid. With that said, about 5 years later, I saw a used copy of this CD, and bought it. I'm sure that a lot of people in their 30's today came of age when this album came out, and hearing "We Built This City" and "Sara" really took me back to that period in my life. I only wish I could go back to 1985 again . . . The quality of the songs on this album are passable, and one can easily tell that there are a group of songwriters writing for the group at this period of this group's long history. However, there are some songs that are very likeable -- Before I Go, Hearts Of The World Will Understand, Sara, and just maybe "We Built This City" -- not for it's songwriting merit, but simply because it is such an 80's song.
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