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"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. Group member, Trevor 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. On February 27, 2000 it also became the millionth video to be aired on MTV. 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. In 2004, The Buggles reunited with Bruce Woolley at Wembley Stadium, to perform Video Killed the Radio Star to raise money for the Prince's Trust charity. They were joined by Debbie Doss and Linda Raoul who had performed the background singing on the original recording. This was the first time they had performed the song together in 25 years.
Audio sample * Notable cover versions (It has also been covered by the Violent Femmes and Radiohead) Parodies See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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