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Video Killed the Radio Star
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Video Killed the Radio Star
"Video Killed the Radio Star" is a song written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, and Bruce Woolley in 1979. It was recorded concurrently by Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club (with Thomas Dolby on keyboards) for their debut studio album, English Garden, and by British new wave/synth-pop group the Buggles, which consisted of Horn and Downes (and initially Woolley). The Buggles' version of the track was recorded and mixed in 1979, released as their debut single on 7 September 1979 by Island Records, and included on their debut studio album, The Age of Plastic.
The song relates to concerns about, and mixed attitudes toward 20th-century inventions and machines for the media arts. The song has been positively received by music critics, with its reviewers praising its unusual musical pop elements. On release, the Buggles' version topped sixteen international record charts, including those in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. It also peaked in the top 10 in Canada, Germany, New Zealand and South Africa, but only reached number 40 in the United States. It has also been certified Platinum in the United Kingdom and France, and has sold 5,000,000 copies worldwide.
The accompanying music video was written, directed, and edited by Russell Mulcahy. It was the first music video shown on MTV in the US, airing at 12:01 a.m. on 1 August 1981, and the first video shown on MTV Classic in the UK on 1 March 2010. The song has received several critical accolades, such as being ranked number 40 on VH1's "100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the '80s". The song has also been covered by many recording artists, including Ben Folds Five, The Presidents of the United States of America, Robbie Williams, and Erasure.
The Buggles, who formed in 1977, first consisted of Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley. They recorded the first demo of "Video Killed the Radio Star" on a Revox A77 tape recorder, one afternoon in 1978, in Downes' flat located above a monumental stonemason's in Wimbledon Park, London. The piece was built up from a chorus riff developed by Woolley. It is one of the three Buggles songs on which Woolley assisted in writing, the two others being "Clean, Clean" and "On TV". A later, more detailed demo of the song, featuring Horn's then-girlfriend Tina Charles on vocals, was recorded at Camden's Soundsuite Studios, and engineered by studio owner Peter Rackham. This demo became the blueprint for the final record, and helped the group get signed to Island Records to record and release their debut album The Age of Plastic, as well as producing and writing for the label, after Downes' girlfriend, who worked for Island, managed to get it played to executives there. Woolley left during recording to form his own band, The Camera Club, which did their own version of "Video", as well as "Clean, Clean" for their album English Garden.
Horn has said that J. G. Ballard's short story "The Sound-Sweep", in which the title character—a mute boy vacuuming up stray music in a world without it—comes upon an opera singer hiding in a sewer, provided inspiration for "Video", and he felt "an era was about to pass." Horn claimed that Kraftwerk was another influence of the song: "It was like you could see the future when you heard Kraftwerk, something new is coming, something different. Different rhythm section, different mentality. So we had all of that, myself and Bruce, and we wrote this song probably six months before we recorded it." In a 2018 interview Horn stated: "I'd read JG Ballard and had this vision of the future where record companies would have computers in the basement and manufacture artists. I'd heard Kraftwerk's The Man-Machine and video was coming. You could feel things changing".
All the tracks of The Age of Plastic deal with positives and concerns of the impact of modern technology. The theme of "Video Killed the Radio Star" is thus nostalgia, with the lyrics referring to a period of technological change in the 1960s, the desire to remember the past and the disappointment that children of the current generation would not appreciate the past. The lyrics relate to concerns of the varied behaviours towards 20th-century technical inventions and machines used and changed in media arts such as photography, cinema, radio, television, audio recording and record production. According to Horn, the band initially struggled to come up with a line to follow the song's opening ("I heard you on the wireless back in '52"): he eventually came up with "Lying awake intent at tuning in on you", inspired by memories of listening to Radio Luxembourg at night as a child. Woolley worried about the song's name, given the existence of a band with the name Radio Stars and a song titled "Video King" by singer Snips.
The Buggles' version of "Video Killed the Radio Star" is a new wave and synth-pop song. It performs like an extended jingle, sharing its rhythm characteristics with disco. The piece plays in common time at a bright tempo of 132 beats per minute. It is in the key of D♭ major, and six basic chords are used in the song's chord progression. According to Geoff Downes, "It's actually a lot more complicated piece of music than people think, for instance part of the bridge is actually suspended chords and minor 9ths. A lot of people transcribed the song wrongly, they thought it was a straight F# chord. The song was written in D flat. The suspended gives it a slightly different feel." Writing in his book, Pop Music: Technology and Creativity: Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution, Timothy Warner said that the "relatively quiet introduction" helped the listener detect a high amount of "tape hiss" generated through the use of analog multi-track tape recorders, as well as the timbre of the synthesized instruments, give an indication of the technical process and time of producing the song.
Horn and Downes tried to interest labels in the song, but were turned down multiple times, including by Island Records. Downes' then girlfriend worked for Island and was able to get the song listened to again. The demo ended up being heard by Chris Blackwell, who chose to sign the band. The song took more than three months of production. In 2018 Downes stated that the version that was released was rewritten from that recorded for the band's demo tape: the verses were extended and Downes contributed a new intro and middle eight, with the bulk of the original song having already been written by Horn and Woolley when he joined. The instrumental track was recorded at Virgin's Town House in West London in twelve hours, with mixing and recording of vocals held at Sarm East Studios. The entire song was mixed through a Trident TSM console. "Video" was the first track recorded for the group's debut LP, The Age of Plastic, which cost a sum of £60,000 (equivalent to £434,785 in 2023) to produce, and the song was mixed by Gary Langan four or five times. According to Langan, "there was no total recall, so we just used to start again. We’d do a mix and three or four days later Trevor would go, 'It's not happening. We need to do this and we need to do that.' The sound of the bass drum was one of his main concerns, along with his vocal and the backing vocals. It was all about how dry and how loud they should be in the mix without the whole thing sounding ridiculous. As it turned out, that record still had the loudest bass drum ever for its time."
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Video Killed the Radio Star
"Video Killed the Radio Star" is a song written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, and Bruce Woolley in 1979. It was recorded concurrently by Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club (with Thomas Dolby on keyboards) for their debut studio album, English Garden, and by British new wave/synth-pop group the Buggles, which consisted of Horn and Downes (and initially Woolley). The Buggles' version of the track was recorded and mixed in 1979, released as their debut single on 7 September 1979 by Island Records, and included on their debut studio album, The Age of Plastic.
The song relates to concerns about, and mixed attitudes toward 20th-century inventions and machines for the media arts. The song has been positively received by music critics, with its reviewers praising its unusual musical pop elements. On release, the Buggles' version topped sixteen international record charts, including those in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. It also peaked in the top 10 in Canada, Germany, New Zealand and South Africa, but only reached number 40 in the United States. It has also been certified Platinum in the United Kingdom and France, and has sold 5,000,000 copies worldwide.
The accompanying music video was written, directed, and edited by Russell Mulcahy. It was the first music video shown on MTV in the US, airing at 12:01 a.m. on 1 August 1981, and the first video shown on MTV Classic in the UK on 1 March 2010. The song has received several critical accolades, such as being ranked number 40 on VH1's "100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the '80s". The song has also been covered by many recording artists, including Ben Folds Five, The Presidents of the United States of America, Robbie Williams, and Erasure.
The Buggles, who formed in 1977, first consisted of Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley. They recorded the first demo of "Video Killed the Radio Star" on a Revox A77 tape recorder, one afternoon in 1978, in Downes' flat located above a monumental stonemason's in Wimbledon Park, London. The piece was built up from a chorus riff developed by Woolley. It is one of the three Buggles songs on which Woolley assisted in writing, the two others being "Clean, Clean" and "On TV". A later, more detailed demo of the song, featuring Horn's then-girlfriend Tina Charles on vocals, was recorded at Camden's Soundsuite Studios, and engineered by studio owner Peter Rackham. This demo became the blueprint for the final record, and helped the group get signed to Island Records to record and release their debut album The Age of Plastic, as well as producing and writing for the label, after Downes' girlfriend, who worked for Island, managed to get it played to executives there. Woolley left during recording to form his own band, The Camera Club, which did their own version of "Video", as well as "Clean, Clean" for their album English Garden.
Horn has said that J. G. Ballard's short story "The Sound-Sweep", in which the title character—a mute boy vacuuming up stray music in a world without it—comes upon an opera singer hiding in a sewer, provided inspiration for "Video", and he felt "an era was about to pass." Horn claimed that Kraftwerk was another influence of the song: "It was like you could see the future when you heard Kraftwerk, something new is coming, something different. Different rhythm section, different mentality. So we had all of that, myself and Bruce, and we wrote this song probably six months before we recorded it." In a 2018 interview Horn stated: "I'd read JG Ballard and had this vision of the future where record companies would have computers in the basement and manufacture artists. I'd heard Kraftwerk's The Man-Machine and video was coming. You could feel things changing".
All the tracks of The Age of Plastic deal with positives and concerns of the impact of modern technology. The theme of "Video Killed the Radio Star" is thus nostalgia, with the lyrics referring to a period of technological change in the 1960s, the desire to remember the past and the disappointment that children of the current generation would not appreciate the past. The lyrics relate to concerns of the varied behaviours towards 20th-century technical inventions and machines used and changed in media arts such as photography, cinema, radio, television, audio recording and record production. According to Horn, the band initially struggled to come up with a line to follow the song's opening ("I heard you on the wireless back in '52"): he eventually came up with "Lying awake intent at tuning in on you", inspired by memories of listening to Radio Luxembourg at night as a child. Woolley worried about the song's name, given the existence of a band with the name Radio Stars and a song titled "Video King" by singer Snips.
The Buggles' version of "Video Killed the Radio Star" is a new wave and synth-pop song. It performs like an extended jingle, sharing its rhythm characteristics with disco. The piece plays in common time at a bright tempo of 132 beats per minute. It is in the key of D♭ major, and six basic chords are used in the song's chord progression. According to Geoff Downes, "It's actually a lot more complicated piece of music than people think, for instance part of the bridge is actually suspended chords and minor 9ths. A lot of people transcribed the song wrongly, they thought it was a straight F# chord. The song was written in D flat. The suspended gives it a slightly different feel." Writing in his book, Pop Music: Technology and Creativity: Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution, Timothy Warner said that the "relatively quiet introduction" helped the listener detect a high amount of "tape hiss" generated through the use of analog multi-track tape recorders, as well as the timbre of the synthesized instruments, give an indication of the technical process and time of producing the song.
Horn and Downes tried to interest labels in the song, but were turned down multiple times, including by Island Records. Downes' then girlfriend worked for Island and was able to get the song listened to again. The demo ended up being heard by Chris Blackwell, who chose to sign the band. The song took more than three months of production. In 2018 Downes stated that the version that was released was rewritten from that recorded for the band's demo tape: the verses were extended and Downes contributed a new intro and middle eight, with the bulk of the original song having already been written by Horn and Woolley when he joined. The instrumental track was recorded at Virgin's Town House in West London in twelve hours, with mixing and recording of vocals held at Sarm East Studios. The entire song was mixed through a Trident TSM console. "Video" was the first track recorded for the group's debut LP, The Age of Plastic, which cost a sum of £60,000 (equivalent to £434,785 in 2023) to produce, and the song was mixed by Gary Langan four or five times. According to Langan, "there was no total recall, so we just used to start again. We’d do a mix and three or four days later Trevor would go, 'It's not happening. We need to do this and we need to do that.' The sound of the bass drum was one of his main concerns, along with his vocal and the backing vocals. It was all about how dry and how loud they should be in the mix without the whole thing sounding ridiculous. As it turned out, that record still had the loudest bass drum ever for its time."