We Built This City Bitpop/Chiptune
Made with the sounds on the Commodore 64 - 6 Channel This is another one of those classic 80s songs that makes its way onto every 'worst songs of all time' lists.
8 bit chiptunes behaving badly
I was demoscene programmer & musician back in the 80s on the Commodore 64 computer then later on the Commodore Amiga. Part of what I did was write a sound player to exploited tricks to make its sound chip to some conceptually far fetched tricks. Some of my music is listed in the High Voltage SID Collection (Google: HSVC).
Years later, I've revived my musical bent for the C64 but now I combine modern songs with these sounds of one of the greatest sounding computers of any generation in a genre called Bitpop.
Bitpop is a genre like the more common Chiptunes genre with the difference being that Bitpop isn't constrained to pure 8bit raw sounds. It instead can have modernised instruments, effect and often vocals.
I'm attempting to walk the razor's edge here between Lo-Fi & Hi-Fi, making the sound of the Commodore 64 6581 SID sound chip lift with contemporary sound engineering and musical pieces.
Lyrics
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll, built this city
We built this city on rock and roll, oh
Say you don't know me, or recognize my face
Say you don't care who goes to that kind of place
Knee-deep in the hoopla, sinking in your fight
We got too many runaways eating up the night
Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember?
We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll, built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
Someone's always playing corporation games
Who cares, they're always changing corporation names
We just want to dance here, someone stole the stage
They call us irresponsible, write us off the page
Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember?
We built this city, we built this city on rock an' roll
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll, built this city
We built this city on rock and roll, built this city
We built this city on rock and roll, built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
It's just another Sunday in a tired old street
Well, if you got the toco, oh, then we just lost the beat
Who counts the money underneath the bar?
And who writes the wrecking ball in two wild guitars?
Don't tell us you need us, 'cause we're just simple fools
Looking for America, coming through your schools
Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember?
We built this city, we built this city on rock an' roll
We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll, built this city
We built this city on rock and roll, built this city
We built this city on rock and roll, built this city
We built this city on rock and roll, oh
