1985 No. 1, Later A Sausage-Themed UK Christmas Smash, Hit The Top 41 Years Ago Today

Strangely, "We Built This City," often considered the absolute worst song of the 1980s, technically went to No. 1 twice. Starship, the third evolution of psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane, reached a level of commercial success that evaded its prior incarnations in mid-November 1985, when "We Built This City" went to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. With a textbook definition of an earworm hook (courtesy of vocalists Grace Slick and Mickey Thomas), "We Built This City" is a glossy sheen of '80s camp, an uplifting, inspiring song about the power of rock.

It didn't start that way, though, as "We Built This City" wasn't actually written by Starship; it was a collaboration between Martin Page of techno-pop group Q-Feel and Elton John's longtime lyricist, Bernie Taupin. After a lunchtime meeting, they began bouncing ideas off each other, resulting in a demo that Taupin described to Rolling Stone as a "very dark kind of mid-tempo song, and it didn't have all this 'We built this city!' ... It was a very dark song about how club life in LA was being killed off and live acts had no place to go."

The demo languished for six months before three producers — Peter Wolf, Dennis Lambert, and Jerry Smith — got hold of it. The trio reworked it into the hit we know today, albeit with some of the more confusing lyrics of the '80s, but it wouldn't be the first time that "We Built This City" got a makeover.

Roughly 33 years after "We Built This City" spent two weeks on top of the Hot 100, the song reached No. 1 again — sorta. Firstly, it went to No.1 in the United Kingdom, and secondly, it was during Christmas, when scoring the No. 1 song becomes somewhat of a national obsession, akin to any reality television spectacle. And finally, it was about sausage rolls. 

A YouTube star by the name of LadBaby (aka Mark Hoyle) released a food-themed cover of "We Built This City," and it went to No. 1 on Christmas week of 2018, beating out Ariana Grande's "Thank U, Next" and Ava Max's "Sweet but Psycho." LadBaby's cover pretty much says what it is on the tin. "If you've never had one / And don't recognize the taste / It's a cylindrical bit of pork wrapped / In a puff pastry case," he sings in the first verse, and it doesn't get much deeper than that. 

While it might seem strange that this went to No. 1, LadBaby's cover was a charity single, with all proceeds going to The Trussell Trust, a foodbank charity. LadBaby would go to No. 1 four more times for a record five consecutive Official Christmas No. 1 hits: "I Love Sausage Rolls" in 2019, "Don't Stop Me Eatin'" in 2020, "Sausage Rolls For Everyone (featuring Ed Sheeran and Elton John) in 2021, and "Food Aid" in 2022. As for Starship, it topped the Hot 100 two more times, with "Sara" and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now."