In April 2004, the song was listed as "the #1 Worst Song Ever" by Blender magazine.

According to Slick, the song was written about early-1970s Los Angeles..

MTV executive and former D.J. Les Garland provided the D.J. voice-over during the song's bridge.

The song was also released without the traffic report and D.J. interaction during the song's bridge (the B-side of the promotional 45-rpm record). Local stations were encouraged to make local versions. New York City, for example, included a traffic report describing conditions on the George Washington Bridge and LG73 in Vancouver, British Columbia included a traffic report overlooking the Lion's Gate Bridge.

Janice Cruz, later from the Brooklyn-based indie rock trio Dark Room NYC, appears in the first verse of the video.

The song references radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi playing the "mamba". While "mamba" has no musical connotations, there is a dance known as the mambo.

The Blender ranking of the song as the worst song ever was in conjunction with a VH1 Special of The 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs...Ever. In order to qualify for the distinction, the songs on the list had to be a popular hit at some point, thus disqualifying many songs that would by general consensus be considered much worse. Blender editor Craig Marks said of the song, "It purports to be anti-commercial but reeks of '80s corporate-rock commercialism. It's a real reflection of what practically killed rock music in the '80s."

Blender magazine contributor Russ Heller later set a record for listening to "We Built This City" continuously for 24 hours. He was encased in a Plexiglas booth—without earplugs—beginning Friday, October 13, 2006 at 8:00 a.m. at a Best Buy store in New York City.

Australian punk band Frenzal Rhomb covered "We Built This City" on their 2004 album For the Term of Their Unnatural Lives.

It was later covered by LMP on its album A Century of Song. The British band Half Man Half Biscuit recorded a song called "We Built This Village on a Trad Arr Tune".