1985 No. 1 Hit, Ranked 'Worst Song Ever,' Is Making an Unexpected Comeback 41 Years Later
On the one hand, it's not uncommon for a #1 song to experience a steep decline in popularity after topping the charts...but they're not all remembered as the "worst song ever" (by a member of the band, no less).
Even though Starship's "We Built This City" went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on Nov. 16, 1985, in the years since, it's gained a reputation as one of the awful tunes ever to hit the airwaves. Not only did Starship member Grace Slick go on record about how much she hated the track, but countless critics have agreed: As Ultimate Classic Rock reported, VH1 and Blender magazine ranked the song #1 on their list of The 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs…Ever in 2004; a few years later, in 2011, Rolling Stone's readers declared "We Built This City" to be the worst song of the '80s. GQ even called it "the most detested song in human history."
So why does it seem like you've been hearing "We Built This City" on TV like, all the time for the past year? It all has to do with toilet paper.
That would be Quilted Northern toilet paper, to be exact, and the company's "Keep It Quilted" campaign. In the commercials, a trio of women known as the Quilted Queens wear white quilted jackets and sing their own version of Starship's hit, "We Quilt This City," while grocery shopping. They ads, designed in collaboration with Orchard Creative, are colorful, ridiculous, and unbelievably catchy (just like the original song).
"We wanted to build a campaign to help Quilted Northern break through the noise in the category, and most importantly, be able to communicate why our target consumer should choose Quilted Northern," said Priti Lokre, Quilted Northern senior brand building manager in a statement shared with Tissue Online North America.
To that end, the lyrics of "We Quilt This City" are an ode to comfort:
"So cushy and so plushy / Just give it a try / Feeling is believing / We quilt this city with a comfy roll"
Grace Slick never liked 'We Built This City'
The fact that "We Built This City" ended up as a toilet paper commercial theme song only makes Slick's explanation for why she did the song in the first place all the more fitting.
As Slick told Vanity Fair in 2012, she agreed to sing on "We Built This City" because she was trying to make amends for past behavior.
"I was such an a-hole 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 said. "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 s-tting me, that's the worst song ever."
And now it all makes sense.
Related: 1966 Classic Rock Hit Is Making a Massive Comeback 60 Years Later
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This story was originally published May 12, 2026 at 10:08 PM.