Now, Rolling Stone, which has probably absorbed a lot of Blender’s readership since the latter magazine ceased publication, has asked its readers to vote for the worst songs of the 1980s. Although as a child I listened consistently to the commercial music of the eighties, since reading Joe S. Harrington I have been completely turned away from it. The list voted for was:
- Starship - “We Built This City” (On Rock and Roll)
- Europe - “The Final Countdown”
- Chris de Burgh - “The Lady in Red”
- Wham! — “Wake Me Up (Before You Go Go)”
- Men Without Hats — “The Safety Dance”
- Falco — “Rock Me Amadeus”
- Bobby McFerrin — “Don’t Worry Be Happy”
- Toni Basil — “Mickey”
- Taco — “Putting On the Ritz”
- Rick Astley — “Never Gonna Give You Up”
in fact, I have never found “We Built This City” anything like so bad as Jefferson Starship’s other songs of the 1980s like “Jane” or “No Way Out” which were less successful but far worse examples of “We Built This City”. All the other songs on the list, however, really are very bad, and most are staples of these lists with at least three being repeats from the 2005 Blender list. The similarity with “We Built This City” and the more-deserving “Mickey”, “Don}t Worry Be Happy” and “The Final Countdown” is so striking I really wonder if the readers took their cues from it.
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