Starship‘s “We Built This City,” which its own singer Grace Slick labeled “the worst song ever,” has seemingly achieved its ultimate destiny as the soundtrack for a toilet paper commercial.
The gratingly peppy, keyboard-saturated “We Built This City” topped the pop charts in 1985. It also drew immediate and lasting scorn from fans offended by its highly produced corporate rock style, especially since Starship’s family tree (via Slick and Jefferson Starship) traced back directly to ’60s counter-culture icons Jefferson Airplane. It is regularly included on lists of the worst songs of all time.
Now re-written and re-recorded as “We Quilt This City,” the song is being used to sell Quilted Northern toilet paper. The commercial embedded below features three women turning a supermarket into a brightly colored ’80s dance club while promising to change your toilet paper game: “So cushy and so plushy / Just give it a try / Feeling is believing / We quilt this city with a comfy roll.”
Read More: In Defense of Starship’s ‘We Built This City’
In a 2012 interview Slick explained that she never liked “We Built This City,” but agreed to sing it in order to make up for being a bad bandmate in the past. “I was such an asshole for a while, I was trying to make up for it by being sober, which I was all during the ’80s, which is a bizarre decade to be sober in,” she told Vanity Fair. “So I was trying to make it up to the band by being a good girl. Here, we’re going to sing this song, ‘We Built This City on Rock & Roll.’ Oh you’re shitting me, that’s the worst song ever.”
Watch the Starship-Inspired “We Quilt This City” Commercial
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
