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In 2004, Blender magazine named “We Built This City” the worst song ever. A couple decades ago, busting on the 1985 Starship was all the rage. Now? Well, Blender magazine is long gone (it went belly up in 2009) and “We Built This City” has a billion or so streams across digital platforms.
“In magazines, it became a trend to figure out the worst things ever, the worst songs ever, the worst guitar solos ever, or whatever,” Starship frontman Mickey Thomas told the Herald with a laugh. “(The Blender magazine swipe) kind of had a snowball effect. But we’re well past that now. As far as the audience goes, nobody ever hears us play the song and says, ‘Oh, no, not this song again.’”
Starship’s signature song was cool — actually super cool, a No. 1 smash — then uncool, then cool, then uncool, and so on. Like so much in our culture (Hall & Oates, fanny packs, Barbie), “We Built This City” has cycled through blowback and renaissance over and over again. But, as Starship will prove on March 1 at Lynn Memorial Auditorium, thousands of fans don’t care about following cultural whiplash, they just want to enjoy great pop songs and huge rock anthems.
In the 40 plus years, since he joined Jefferson Starship in 1979 and busted out the gate with the glorious groove of “Jane,” Thomas has never tired of singing the hits.
“Sometimes bands of our ilk, get a little bit slow, a little bit less enthusiastic,” he said with another laugh. “I think people are surprised with the high energy level, the vibrancy, that Starship brings to the stage.”
Thomas has no problem loading the set with favorites from every radically different incarnation of the band, even lineups that predate his involvement — you can expect to hear “Sara” and “Jane,” “Miracles” and “White Rabbit.” He seems to have a reverence for each version of the band. He also acknowledges that making hard artistic turns — despite how these 180s make some fans feel — was a necessity to survival.
“It was very intentional to try to completely redefine the sound of the band (with 1985 album “Knee Deep in the Hoopla),” he said. “We thought, if we are going to survive, we’ve got to have a presence on the radio and a presence on MTV… So we took the risk, rolled the dice, and I think we accomplished what we set out to accomplish. But because of the long history of the band going all the way back to the counterculture revolution of the 1960s, the stakes were higher for Starship.”
Fade out holding on to your old sound or reinvent yourself and face cries of sellout — “It’s a double edged sword,” he said.
Of course, if you last long enough you can eventually stop worrying about reinvention. Eventually, the haters move on to hating something else (or go up in smoke like Blender magazine) and a core fanbase will pass your catchy catalog to the kids.
“We see the grandma, the mom, and the daughter all at the show and enjoying it,” Thomas said. “It’s a cool thing in rock these days. There used to be this generation gap in music and I don’t think that exists anymore, and that’s a good thing.”
For tickets, tour dates and details, visit starshipcontrol.com
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