> What I want to know is: which city are they talking about?


The following is excerpted from the entry for "We Built This City" in Fred Bronson's book "The Billboard Book of Number One Hits" (yes, this terrible song really did hit #1...).

The original song was not oriented at San Francisco. "Bernie [Taupin] and I feel it's every city," [Martin] Page confirms. "We didn't write it about San Francisco. In the middle of the demo when the radio DJ comes in, I had a police call that I picked up off the radio which I used. Our demo was a little darker...it was a 'Blade Runner' situation where you're in a city where rock and roll is being stopped by a corporation. Starship brightened it up with the radio programmer talking about sunny days in San Francisco."

-- Trip