[4][5][6] In 2013, Taupin told Rolling Stone that the "original song was a very dark kind of mid-tempo song ... about how club life in L.A. was being killed off and live acts had no place to go ... A guy called Peter Wolf [the album's producer] ... got ahold of the demo and totally changed it.

[5] In an interview with Songfacts, Page added that the "demo was quite high-energy techno, because that was the sound of the band I was in ... it was a little more edgy.

To capitalize on this, several radio stations, with the help of jingle company JAM Creative Productions, customized the bridge when broadcasting the song by adding descriptions of their own local areas or inserting their idents.

[8] The song was engineered by producer Bill Bottrell, written by Bernie Taupin, Martin Page, Dennis Lambert and Peter Wolf and arranged by Bottrell and Jasun Martz with shared lead vocals by Mickey Thomas and Grace Slick.

[9] Cash Box called it "an ear-catching tune" and described it as "dance rock with sharp hooks".

[10] "We Built This City" received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group in 1986.

The mamba is the deadliest snake in the world, so he must have meant the mambo, but it sounds so much like 'mamba' that every lyric website writes it that way.

"[16] Richmond Times-Dispatch music critic Melissa Ruggieri argued that "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" and "Sara" were Starship songs that were more suitable for the top of the list than "We Built This City", a song Ruggieri said "references Marconi, the father of the radio...inserted a cool snippet of DJ chatter from the band's beloved San Francisco...[and] found Grace Slick enunciating the phrase 'corporation games' with nutty abandon.

"[17] In 2011, a Rolling Stone magazine online readers poll named "We Built This City" the worst song of the 1980s.

The song's winning margin was so large that the magazine reported it "could be the biggest blow-out victory in the history of the Rolling Stone Readers Poll".