| "Video Killed the Radio Star" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Common variant of the standard artwork | ||||
| Single bythe Buggles | ||||
| from the albumThe Age of Plastic | ||||
| B-side | "Kid Dynamo" | |||
| Released | 7 September 1979[1] | |||
| Recorded | 1979 | |||
| Studio |
| |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length |
| |||
| Label | Island | |||
| Songwriters | ||||
| Producers | ||||
| The Buggles singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
8 tracks
| ||||
| Music video | ||||
| "Video Killed the Radio Star" onYouTube | ||||
"Video Killed the Radio Star" is a song written byTrevor Horn,Geoff Downes, andBruce Woolley in 1979. It was recorded concurrently by Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club (withThomas Dolby on keyboards) for their debut studio album,English Garden, and by British new wave/synth-pop groupthe 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 byIsland 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 bymusic critics, with its reviewers praising its unusual musical pop elements. On release, the Buggles' version topped sixteen internationalrecord 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 accompanyingmusic video was written, directed, and edited byRussell Mulcahy. It was thefirst music video shown onMTV in the US, airing at 12:01 a.m. on 1 August 1981, and the first video shown onMTV Classic in the UK on 1 March 2010. It was also the final music video played onMTV Music in the UK before it closed down on 31 December 2025.[2] The song has received several critical accolades, such as being ranked number 40 on VH1's "100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the '80s".[3] The song has also beencovered by many recording artists, includingBen Folds Five,The Presidents of the United States of America,Robbie Williams, andErasure.
The Buggles, who formed in 1977, first consisted ofTrevor Horn,Geoff Downes andBruce Woolley.[4] They recorded the first demo of "Video Killed the Radio Star" on aRevox A77 tape recorder, one afternoon in 1978, in Downes' flat located above amonumental stonemason's inWimbledon Park,London.[5][6][7] The piece was built up from a chorus riff developed by Woolley.[6] It is one of the three Buggles songs on which Woolley assisted in writing, the two others being "Clean, Clean" and "On TV".[4] A later, more detailed demo of the song, featuring Horn's then-girlfriendTina 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 toIsland Records to record and release their debut albumThe 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.[4][8][9] 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 albumEnglish Garden.[4]
Horn has said thatJ. 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 anopera singer hiding in a sewer, provided inspiration for "Video", and he felt "an era was about to pass."[10] Horn claimed thatKraftwerk 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."[7] In a 2018 interview Horn stated: "I'd readJG Ballard and had this vision of the future where record companies would have computers in the basement and manufacture artists. I'd heard Kraftwerk'sThe Man-Machine and video was coming. You could feel things changing".[9]
All the tracks ofThe Age of Plastic deal with positives and concerns of the impact of modern technology.[8] The theme of "Video Killed the Radio Star" is thusnostalgia, 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.[11] The lyrics relate to concerns of the varied behaviours towards 20th-century technical inventions and machines used and changed in media arts such asphotography,cinema,radio,television,audio recording andrecord production.[12] 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 toRadio Luxembourg at night as a child.[9] Woolley worried about the song's name, given the existence of a band with the nameRadio Stars and a song titled "Video King" by singerSnips.[13]
The Buggles' version of "Video Killed the Radio Star" is anew wave andsynth-pop song.[14][15][16] It performs like an extendedjingle,[14] sharing its rhythm characteristics withdisco.[17] The piece plays incommon time at a brighttempo of 132beats per minute.[18] It is in the key ofD♭ major,[6][18] and six basic chords are used in the song'schord progression.[17] 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."[6] 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-tracktape recorders, as well as thetimbre of the synthesized instruments, give an indication of the technical process and time of producing the song.[19]
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 byChris Blackwell, who chose to sign the band.[20] The song took more than three months of production.[6] 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.[9] The instrumental track was recorded at Virgin's Town House in West London in twelve hours, with mixing and recording of vocals held atSarm East Studios.[7][8][21] The entire song was mixed through a Trident TSM console.[8] "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,[21] and the song was mixed byGary Langan four or five times.[8] 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."[8]
The song includesinstrumentation ofdrums,bass guitar,electric guitar,synth strings,piano,glockenspiel,marimbas and other futuristic, twinkly sounds, andvocals.[14][6][22][text–source integrity?] Downes used aSolina,Minimoog andProphet-5 to create the overdubbed orchestral parts.[6] Both the male and female voices differ to give a tonal and historical contrast.[23] When Langan was interviewed in December 2011, he believed the male vocal was recorded through either a dynamicShure SM57,SM58,Sennheiser MD 421, or STC 4038 ribbon microphone, and that four or five takes had to be done.[8] The male voice echoes the song's theme in the tone of the music, initially limited inbandwidth to give a "telephone" effect typical of early broadcasts, and uses a Mid-Atlantic accent resembling that of British singers in the 1950s and '60s.[23] TheVox AC30 amplifier was used to achieve the telephone effect, and Gary Langan says he was trying to make it "loud without cutting your head off". Gary Langan and Trevor Horn also tried using abullhorn, but they found it too harsh. Langan later compressed and EQ'd the male vocals, and he said that doing the compression for old-style vocal parts was a "real skill".[8] The female vocals are panned in the left and right audio channels,[8] and sound more modern and have aNew York accent.[23]
The single version of "Video Killed the Radio Star" lasts for 3 minutes and 25 seconds. The album version plays for 4 minutes and 13 seconds, about 48 seconds longer than the single version, as it fades into a piano and synthcoda, titled "Polythene Symphonia", which ends with a brief sampling of the female vocals.[8]
The song became aBillboard Top Single Pick on 3 November 1979. The publication found the chorus catchy and also highlighted the orchestral instruments supporting the backing singers.[24] Although there had been a mixed review of the single fromSmash Hits byAndy Partridge ofXTC, who found the song to be "too tidy, like Vymura" (wallpaper),[25] they listed it in a review ofThe Age of Plastic as one of the best tracks of the album, along with "Living in the Plastic Age".[26] Timothy Warner wrote that, although several common pop elements were still present in the song, it included stronger originality for its own purpose than most other pop hits released at the time.[27] These unusual pop music characteristics include the timbres of the male and female vocal parts, and the use of suspended fourth and ninths chords for enhancement in its progression.[17] He also felt it was unnecessary to dislike it as a "novelty song".[27]AllMusic's Heather Phares said the track "can be looked on as a perfectly preserved new wave gem", "just as the song looks back on the radio songs of the '50s and '60s". She concluded her review by saying that it "still sounds as immediate as it did when it was released, however, and that may be the song's greatest irony".[14]
However, many writers called Woolley's recording of "Video" much better than the Buggles' version.[28][29][30] This included one critic who called both acts overall as of being very high quality, but felt that Woolley's version was more faithful to the source material than that of the Buggles, noting the filtered vocals and cute, female vocals of the latter rendition as giving it a novelty feel.[31] However, he also wrote of liking both versions of "Clean, Clean" on the same level. For what it's worth, the Woolley version ranked number 18 for 2 weeks on Canada'sCHUM Chart, 19 and 26 May 1980.[32]
In 2024,Billboard recognized "Video Killed the Radio Star" as one of the 100 greatest songs about the music industry, ranking it at number one.[33]
| Publication/TV show/author(s) | Country | Accolade | Year | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 to 1 | Australia | Top 20 One Hit Wonders[34] | 2006 | 3 |
| Bruce Pollock | United States | The 7,500 Most Important Songs of 1944–2000[35] | 2005 | * |
| Giannis Petridis | Greece | 2004 of the Best Songs of the Century[citation needed] | 2003 | |
| Gilles Verlant, Thomas Caussé | France | 3000 Rock Classics[citation needed] | 2009 | |
| The Guardian | United Kingdom | The Top 100 British Number 1 Singles[36] | 53 | |
| Hervé Bourhis | France | Le Petit Livre Rock: The Juke Box Singles 1950-2009[citation needed] | 2009 | * |
| Les Inrockuptibles | 1000 Indispensable Songs[citation needed] | 2006 | ||
| Mashable | United States | 32 Unforgettable Music Videos[37] | 2013 | |
| MSN Music | United Kingdom | Best Song Titles Ever[38] | 2003 | 19 |
| NBC-10 | United States | The 30 Best Songs of the 80s[citation needed] | 2006 | * |
| Pause & Play | Songs Inducted into a Time Capsule, One Track at Each Week[citation needed] | |||
| PopMatters | The 100 Best Songs Since Johnny Rotten Roared[39] | 2003 | 73 | |
| Q | United Kingdom | The 1010 Songs You Must Own (Q50: One-hit Wonders)[40] | 2004 | * |
| Time | United States | Top 10 MTV Moments[41] | 2010 | |
| Time Out | United Kingdom | 100 Songs That Changed History[42] | 100 | |
| Triple J Hottest 100 | Australia | Hottest 100 of All Time[43] | 1998 | 79 |
| VH1 | United States | 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the 80's[3] | 2009 | 40 |
| 100 Greatest Videos[44] | 2001 | 79 | ||
| Volume! | France | 200 Records that Changed the World[citation needed] | 2008 | * |
| Xfinity | United States | Top 10 Groundbreaking Videos[45] | 10 | |
| WhatCulture! | 10 Controversial Music Videos That Look Tame Today[46] | 2013 | * | |
| WOXY.com | The 500 Best Modern Rock Songs of All Time[citation needed] | 2008 | 348 | |
| "*" indicates the list is unordered. | ||||
"Video Killed the Radio Star" was a huge commercial success, reaching number one on 16 national charts.[47] The song made its debut on theUK Singles Chart in the top 40 at number 24, on the issue dated 29 September 1979.[48] The next week, the track entered into the chart's top ten at number six[49] before topping the chart on the week of 20 October.[50] It was the 444thUK number-one hit in the chart's entire archive.[47] In 2022, the single was certified platinum by theBritish Phonographic Industry (BPI) for UK sales and streams of 600,000 units.[1]
In Australia, "Video Killed the Radio Star" reached number one, and for 27 years it held the country's record for best-selling single.[47] In late 1979, while the single was still in an eight-week run at Number one in the charts, the single was awarded a platinum disc by Festival Records, the record's distributing company, for sales of over 100,000 copies in Australia.[51] The song also made a number-one peak in France and Spain,[52][53] where it was certified gold and platinum, respectively, as well as Austria,[54] Ireland,[55] Sweden[56] and Switzerland.[57] In other parts of Europe and Oceania, "Video Killed the Radio Star" was a number-two hit in Germany and New Zealand,[58][59] and also charted in Flanders on theUltratop 50[60] and in the Netherlands, on the Nationale Hitparade Top 50 (now theSingle Top 100) andDutch Top 40.[61][62]
"Video Killed the Radio Star" did not start charting in North America, however, until November 1979. In the United States, the song appeared on theBillboard Hot 100 andCash Box Top 100, barely breaking into the top 40 on both charts.[63][64] In a 2015 list fromBillboard, it tied withMarvin Gaye's recording of "The End of Our Road" as the "Biggest Hot 100 Hit" at the peak of number 40.[65] "Video Killed the Radio Star" debuted at number 86 on theBillboard Hot 100 on the week of 10 November 1979,[66] while on theCash Box Top 100 it debuted at number 83 that same week.[67] It started also at number 83 on the CanadianRPM Top Single Chart.[68] By January 1980, it entered the top 40 at number 31,[69] and on 2 February made it into the top 20 at number 11.[70] Two weeks later, the song earned its peak in the top 10 at number 6 and issue dated 16 February 1980.[71]
Themusic video for "Video Killed the Radio Star", written, directed and edited by AustralianRussell Mulcahy,[72][73] was produced on a budget of $50,000.[5] The video was shot in one day in South London,[72] and was edited over two days.[73] Around 30 takes were required for shots of the actress in the tube. The tube falls over in the video, although Mulcahy claims it was not intended to be shown in the final edit.[72]Hans Zimmer can be briefly seen wearing black playing a keyboard,[74] andDebi Doss and Linda Jardim-Allen, who provided the female vocals for the song, are also seen.[75]
The video begins with a young girl sitting in front of a radio. A black-and-white shot of Trevor Horn singing into an early radio-era microphone is superimposed over the young girl by the radio. The radio explodes by the time of the first chorus, then in the second verse, the girl is seen transported into the future, where she meets Horn and a silver-jumpsuited woman in a clear plastic tube. Shots of Horn and Geoff Downes are shown during the remainder of the video.[74]
The music video was first released in 1979,[76] when it was originally broadcast on the BBC'sTop of the Pops for promotion of the single, in lieu of doing live performances.[5] Zimmer recalled in 2001 that the video drew criticism from some viewers who watched it before it aired on MTV, due to being"'too violent' because we blew up a television."[5] The music video forVideo Killed the Radio Star is notable asthe first video ever played on MTV, when the US channel began broadcasting at 12:01 AM on 1 August 1981.[77] On 27 February 2000, it became the one millionth video to be broadcast on MTV.[78] It also openedMTV Classic in the UK and Ireland. The video marked the closing ofMTV Philippines before its shutdown on 15 February 2010 at 11:49 PM.[79][80] It was also the final video aired whenMTV Music ceased broadcasting in theUnited Kingdom andIreland on December 31, 2025.[81] MTV co-founderBob Pittman said the video "made an aspirational statement. We didn't expect to be competitive with radio, but it was certainly a sea-change kind of video."[5] In July 2013, multiple independent artists covered the song for the launch of the TV channelPivot, which launched with the music video of the cover on 1 August at 6 am.[82]
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| Denmark (IFPI Danmark)[108] | Gold | 45,000‡ |
| France (SNEP)[110] | Platinum | 1,200,000[109] |
| Italy (FIMI)[111] | Gold | 50,000‡ |
| Japan (RIAJ)[112] 2007 digital release | Gold | 100,000* |
| New Zealand (RMNZ)[113] | 2× Platinum | 60,000‡ |
| Spain (PROMUSICAE)[114] | Gold | 25,000^ |
| Spain (PROMUSICAE)[115] Sales since 2015 | Gold | 30,000‡ |
| United Kingdom (BPI)[1] | Platinum | 1,000,000‡ |
| Summaries | ||
| Worldwide | — | 5,000,000[116] |
* Sales figures based on certification alone. | ||
| "Video Killed the Radio Star" | |
|---|---|
 Italian single release | |
| Single byBruce Woolley and the Camera Club | |
| from the albumEnglish Garden | |
| B-side | "Get Away William" |
| Released | June 1979[118] |
| Recorded | 1979 (1979) |
| Length | 2:49 |
| Label | Epic |
| Songwriters | |
| Producer | Mike Hurst |
Woolley's version was the first to be released, as a June 1979 single with his group the Camera Club onEpic Records, backed with "Get Away William" (written by Woolley and Dave Birch). It was also included on their debut studio albumEnglish Garden later that year. Their version was recorded in the same year as the Buggles' version, and was produced byMike Hurst.Thomas Dolby, who helped produce the Buggles' version, play the keyboards on Woolley's version. Another contributer to the Buggles' version, Dave Birch, also contributed guitars to Woolley's version.
In February 2002, while on international duty with England,David Beckham became involved in an argument with journalist Rob Shepherd during a press conference after Shepherd made a joke about David and Victoria Beckham's habit of finishing second (David finishing second in the recent FIFA World Player of the Year vote, and Victoria's inability to have a number 1 hit). Beckham sarcastically asked Shepherd, "What do you know about music? How many people in your family have ever had a number one?" Shepherd replied, "One. My sister was in The Buggles." His sister was Linda Jardim-Allen, who sang vocals on the song.[137]
In mid-2020, the song became popular amongTikTok users as a trend to revisit celebrity death conspiracies,[138] and across the internet when adeepfake ofAdolf Hitler andJoseph Stalin singing the song went viral on multiple social media sites.[139][140]
{{cite magazine}}:Missing or empty|title= (help){{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: invalid prefix (help){{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: invalid prefix (help){{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: invalid prefix (help){{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link){{cite web}}:|last= has generic name (help)
