Video Killed the Radio Star
"
Video Killed the Radio Star" is a
New Wave song released in
1979 by the British group
The Buggles that celebrates the
golden days of radio. With broadcast-quality vocals and a bouncy rhythm, the song plays like a jingle. It's a fitting sound, considering the song tells of a singer whose career is cut short by
television. Horn has said his lyrics were inspired by the
J.G. Ballard short story The Sound-Sweep, in which the title character, a deaf and dumb boy vacuuming up stray music in a world without it, comes upon an
opera singer hiding in a sewer. He also felt "an era was about to pass."
Appropriately, considering its subject matter, the music video for the song, directed by
Russell Mulcahy, was the first to be shown on
MTV, when the ground-breaking music channel debuted on
August 1,
1981, at 12:15 AM.
Written by
Trevor Horn,
Geoff Downes and
Bruce Woolley, the song reached number one in the
UK charts the week of
October 20,
1979, the first-ever number one for label
Island Records. It would also top the Australian charts, but only barely made the
Billboard Top 40 in the
U.S. It appears on the album
The Age of Plastic. A different version was recorded by Woolley (with
Thomas Dolby) for his album
Bruce Woolley And The Camera Club, which was a hit in
Canada. The complicated arrangement and production of the song, which includes a chorus sung by a group of very high pitched backup singers, foreshadows Horn's later career as a producer.
[
1]
The Jazz Singer is a 1927 U.S. movie notable for being the first "
talking motion picture" to be widely commercially distributed.
Singing in the Rain is a musical film that explores the transition from
silent film to
sound film*
Radio stars are also a concept of astronomy.
*"
Radio Ga Ga," a single by
Queen that also laments the demise of radio as the primary mass medium.
*
Video Killed The Radio Star Music Video on
YouTube *
Video Killed The Radio Star Music Video (Requires
RealPlayer)
*
Video Killed the Radio Star'' lyricsParodies
*
Internet Killed The Video Star*
Video Killed The YTMND Star
