Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now (1987) – Starship

[Pre-Chorus: Grace Slick]
Let ’em say we’re crazy
What do they know?
Put your arms around me
Baby, don’t ever let go
Let the world around us just fall apart
Baby, we can make it if we’re heart to heart

The above Pre-Chorus by Grace Slick after Verse 2 of Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now gets me every time. How the song works up to this point and her delivery of it in the video below is spectacular. This song video is what you might have watched curled up on a rainy-day Saturday catching the Top 40 on Rage (where it reached No3) in Australia. Not that it rained often where I lived in Western Sydney, but it helps conjure the mood I wanted to convey. Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now is not likely a song I would have run to school saying, ‘you must hear this guys‘, but at least I had this song to pass down to my daughter and she’s a huge fan. Even I had to tell her to watch something else. Ok, I’ll admit the song video is feel-good, catchy and entertaining.

This is another one of those countless pop songs where I prefer the sound in the verses and pre-chorus´ over the chorus which saturates the listener. This song just has two verses! Give me at least another verse and pre-chorus and remove (at least) one chorus. So, let’s look at the timeline here; Verses 1 and 2 (including pre-chorus’) take us up to 2:10 min of a song which lasts 4:27min. The majority is filled with a repetition of the Chorus. So less than half the song contains the meat in the sandwich (if you like). Any-hows, what do I know? Starship made a megahit with Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.

[Verse 1: Mickey Thomas]
Lookin’ in your eyes I see a paradise
This world that I found is too good to be true
Standin’ here beside you
Want so much to give you this love in my heart
That I’m feelin’ for you

[Pre-Chorus: Grace Slick]
Let ’em say we’re crazy, I don’t care ’bout that
Put your hand in my hand
Baby, don’t ever look back
Let the world around us just fall apart
Baby, we can make it if we’re heart to heart

[Chorus: Both]
And we can build this dream together
Standing strong forever
Nothing’s gonna stop us now
And if this world runs out of lovers
We’ll still have each other
Nothing’s gonna stop us
Nothing’s gonna stop us now
Oh, whoa

Excerpts from the Wikipedia article below:

Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now is a song co-written by Diane Warren and Albert Hammond and recorded by American rock band Starship for their second studio album, No Protection (1987). It is a power ballad duet featuring vocalists Grace Slick and Mickey Thomas and is the theme to the romantic-comedy film Mannequin.

The song reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100, Warren’s first single to do so. Elsewhere, Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now topped the charts in Canada, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, where it became the second-best-selling song of 1987. Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now received a nomination for Best Original Song at the 60th Academy Awards.

In a radio interview, Hammond said that the idea for the song came from his impending marriage to his live-in girlfriend of seven years after his divorce from his previous wife was finalized. He had said to Warren, “It’s almost like they’ve stopped me from marrying this woman for seven years, and they haven’t succeeded. They’re not gonna stop me doing it.”The song has been considered “feel good” propelled by a strong synthesizer beat.

References:
1. Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now – Wikipedia

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“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand