| Video Killed The Radio Star |
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"Video Killed the Radio Star" is a 1980s 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. A fitting sound, given 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 12:00 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. The phrase came to light again in 1983 , when Duran Duran caused a minor uproar by releasing the "Union of the Snake" video (the first single from the '' Seven And The Ragged Tiger '' album) to MTV a week before releasing the single to radio. Radio stations feared this might become the wave of the future, with fans tuning into MTV for new music and ignoring radio. Coincidentally, this video was also directed by Mulcahy. NOTABLE COVER VERSIONS TRIVIA
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The song was also covered by amber pacific (Punk) and featured on the konami version of Dance Dance revolution. |
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