Video Killed the Radio Star

"Video Killed the Radio Star"
File:Video Killed the Radio Star Bruce Woolley.jpg
Single by Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club
from the album English Garden
Released	1979
Genre	New wave synthpop
Length	2:49
Label	Epic
Writer(s)	Downes Horn Woolley
Producer(s)	Mike Hurst

"Video Killed the Radio Star"
File:Video Killed the Radio Star single cover.jpg
Single by The Buggles
from the album The Age of Plastic
B-side	"Kid Dynamo"
Released	7 September 1979
Format	7" single
Recorded	1979 Virgin's Townhouse (West London, UK) Sarm East Studios (Brick Lane, London, UK)
Genre	New wave synthpop
Length	3:25 (Single version) 4:13 (Album version)
Label	Island
Writer(s)	Geoff Downes Trevor Horn Bruce Woolley
Producer(s)	The Buggles
Certification	Gold (UK, Spain) Platinum (France)
The Buggles singles chronology
"Video Killed the Radio Star" (1979) "Living in the Plastic Age" (1980)
The Age of Plastic track listing "Living in the Plastic Age" "Video Killed the Radio Star" "Kid Dynamo" "I Love You (Miss Robot)" "Clean, Clean" "Elstree" "Astroboy (And the Proles on Parade)" "Johnny on the Monorail"

"Video Killed the Radio Star" is a song written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley in 1977. It was first recorded by Bruce Woolley and The Camera Club (with Thomas Dolby on keyboards) for their album English Garden, and later by British group The Buggles, consisting of Horn and Downes. The track was recorded and mixed in 1979, released as their debut single on 7 September 1979 by Island Records, and included on their first album The Age of Plastic. The backing track was recorded at Virgin's Town House in West London, and mixing and vocal recording would later take place at Sarm East Studios.

Like all the other tracks from the LP, "Video"'s theme was promotion of technology while worrying about its effects. This song relates to concerns about mixed attitudes towards 20th-century inventions and machines for the media arts. Musically, the song performs like an extended jingle and the composition plays in the key of D-flat major in common time at a tempo of 132 beats per minute. The track has been positively received, with reviewers praising its unusual musical pop elements. Although the song includes several common pop characteristics and six basic chords are used in its structure, Downes and writer Timothy Warner described the piece as musically complicated, due to its use of suspended and minor ninth chords for enhancement that gave the song a "slightly different feel."

Commercially, "Video Killed the Radio Star" was also a success. The track topped sixteen international music charts, including the official singles charts of the group's home country of the UK and other nations such as Australia, Austria, France, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, as well as the Japanese Oricon International Chart. It also peaked within the top 10 in Canada, Germany, New Zealand and South Africa, the top 20 in Belgium and the Netherlands, and barely in the top 40 in the United States.

The song's music video was written, directed, and edited by Russell Mulcahy, and is well-remembered as the first music video shown on MTV in the United States at 12:01am on 1 August 1981, and the first video shown on MTV Classic in the United Kingdom 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. It has been covered by many recording artists. Trevor Horn has done performances of the song, both at Buggles reunion performances and with The Producers, since 1998.

Writing, lyrical themes and background

The Buggles, which formed in 1977, first consisted of Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley. They all wrote "Video Killed the Radio Star" in an hour of one afternoon in 1978, six months before it was recorded, together in Downes' apartment, which was 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 that he assisted in writing, the two others being "Clean, Clean" and "On TV." An early demo of the song they did helped the group get signed to Island Records to record and publish their debut album The Age of Plastic. 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.

Trevor Horn (middle) has said J. G. Ballard's "The Sound-Sweep" was an inspiration for "Video Killed the Radio Star".

Horn has said that the 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."

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 behaviors towards 20th-century technical inventions and machines used and changed in media arts such as photography, cinema, radio, television, audio recording and record production.

Production and music

Note: this section covers the production info and composition and arrangement of the Buggles version of the song, and most of it may not apply to that done by Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club or later cover versions of the song.

Composition and arrangement info
Length	4:13 (album version) 3:25 (single version)
Genre	New wave synthpop
Key	D♭ major
BPM	132
Time signature	4 4 (common time)
Instruments	Drums bass guitar electric guitar synths synth strings synth brass synth piano marimbas male vocals, female vocals

Musically, "Video Killed the Radio Star" is a new wave and synthpop 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 chords suspended 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" helping the listener detect a high amount of "tape hiss" generated through the use of analogue 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.

"Video Killed the Radio Star"

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The final chorus of "Video Killed the Radio Star". There are instruments of electric guitars, a bass guitar, drums, and synths arranged in the track, and the male and female singers' accents and effects differentiate to give a historical and tonalitic contrast.

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The song was put in more than three months of production. The instrumental track was recorded at Virgin's Town House in West London for 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 £307,423 in 2014) to produce, and the song had been 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."

The song includes instrumentation of drums, bass guitar, electric guitar, synth strings, instruments, piano, glockenspiel, marimbas and other futuristic, twinkly sounds, and vocals. Downes used a Solina, Minimoog and Prophet-5 to create the overdubbed orchestral parts. Both the male and female voices differ to give a tonalitic and historical contrast. When Langan was interviewed in December 2011, he believed the male vocal was recorded through either a dynamic Shure SM57, SM58, Sennheiser 421, or STC 4038 ribbon microphone, and that four of five takes had to be done. The male voice echos the song's theme in the tone of the music, initially limited in bandwidth 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. The Vox AC30 amplifier was used to achieve the telephone effect, and Gary Lagan says he was trying to make it "loud without cutting your head off", in others words make the voice sound soft. Gary Langan and Trevor Horn also tried using a bullhorn, 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." The female vocals are panned in the left and right audio channels, and sound more modern and have a New York accent.

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 synth coda, which ends with a brief sampling of the female vocals.

Commercial performance

"Video Killed the Radio Star" was a huge commercial success, reaching number one on 16 different national charts. In the Buggles' home country, the song made its debut on the UK Singles Chart in the top 40 at number 24, on the issue dated 29 September 1979. The next week, the track entered into the chart's top ten at number six, before topping the chart on the week of 20 October. It was the 444th UK number-one hit in the chart's entire archive. The single was later certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry for UK sales of 500,000.

In Australia, "Video Killed the Radio Star" reached number one, where it was the best-selling record for 27 years. The track went number one on the Italian Singles Chart in 1980, where it became the best-selling single of the same year. The song also made a number-one peak in France and Spain, where it was certified gold and platinum, respectively, as well as Austria, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland. In other parts of Europe and Oceania, "Video Killed the Radio Star" was a number-two hit in Germany and New Zealand, and also charted in Flanders, on both the Ultratop 50 and VRT Top 30 charts, and in the Netherlands, on the Nationale Hitparade Top 50 (now the Single Top 100) and Dutch Top 40.

"Video Killed the Radio Star" did not start charting in North America, however, until November 1979. In the United States, the song appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100, barely breaking into the top 40 on both charts. In a 2015 list from Billboard, it tied with Marvin Gaye's recording of "The End of Our Road" as the "Biggest Hot 100 Hit" at the peak of number 40. "Video Killed the Radio Star" had debuted at number 86 on the Billboard Hot 100 on the week of 10 November 1979, while on the Cashbox Top 100 it debuted at number 83 that same week. It started also at number 83 on the Canadian RPM Top Single Chart. By January 1980, it entered the top 40 at number 31, and on 2 February made it into the top 20 at number 11. Two weeks later, the song earned its peak in the top 10 at number 6 and issue dated 16 February 1980.

Critical reception

Ever since its release, the Buggles' version of "Video Killed the Radio Star" has been given a mostly positive reception from music critics. Originally, the song became a Billboard Top Single Pick on 3 November 1979, whom the publication found the chorus catchy and also highlighted the orchestral instruments supporting the backing singers. Although there had been a mixed review of the single from Smash Hits, who found the song to be "too tidy, like vymura" (wallpaper), they listed it in a review of The Age of Plastic as one of the best tracks of the album, along with "Living in the Plastic Age". 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. 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. He also felt it was unnecessary to dislike it as a "novelty song." 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."

However, many writers called Woolley's recording of "Video" much better than the Buggles' version. 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. However, he also wrote of liking both versions of "Clean, Clean" on the same level.

Live performances

A rare live performance of the song by Horn and Downes came at a ZTT showcase in 1998. In 2004, The Buggles re-united again with Bruce Woolley at Wembley Arena to perform "Video Killed the Radio Star" and "Living in the Plastic Age" as part of a tribute event to Horn to raise money for The Prince's Trust charity. They were joined by Debi Doss and Linda Jardim (now Linda Allan), who performed the background singing on the original recording. Paul Robinson, who played drums on the original, also appeared. Both Horn and Downes have performed the song live in other acts, including Yes (which Downes and Horn joined for the Drama album and tour in 1980), Downes in the 2006–2009 revival of Asia with John Wetton on lead vocals, and Horn in his band The Producers, also in 2006.

In November 2006, The Producers played at their first gig in Camden Town. A video clip can be seen on ZTT Records of Horn singing lead vocals and playing bass in a performance of "Video Killed the Radio Star". Tina Charles appears on a YouTube video singing 'Slave to the Rhythm' with The Producers and Horn reveals that Tina was the singer and originator of the "Oh Ah-Oh Ah-Oh" part of 'Video'; fellow 5000 Volt member Martin Jay was also a session musician on The Buggles record.

Robbie Williams performed the song with Trevor Horn at the BBC Electric Proms on 20 October 2009.

Since 2010, Horn has performed "Video" with both the Buggles and his new band, Producers. Since 2011, he has added new vocals to his live performance before the song's final chorus:

Video killed the radio star,
He hit him on the head with his old guitar,
He tried to run away, but didn't get far,
That's how video killed the radio star

Music video

Production and concept

Trevor Horn (right) and Geoff Downes (left) as they appear in the video.

Actress and model Virginia Hey starred in the video as the girl in the test tube.

The music video for "Video Killed the Radio Star", written, directed and edited by Australian Russell Mulcahy, was produced on a budget of $50,000. It was filmed in only a day in South London, and was edited in a couple of days. Geoff Downes said in a 2011 interview that he felt the concept of the video reflected on that of the song. Mulcahy asked a friend of his, Virginia Hey, a model and aspriring actress, to play a girl who was dressed "in a silver costume and be lowered via wires in a test tube." There were about 30 takes 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. Hans Zimmer can be briefly seen wearing black playing a keyboard, and Debi Doss and Linda Jardim, who provided the female vocals for the song, are also seen.

The video starts with a girl c. 1952, sitting in front of a radio. A black-and-white shot of Trevor Horn singing into a radio-era microphone is altered over the girl by the radio. The radio blows up by the time of the first chorus, and then in the second verse, she is seen transported into the future, where she meets Horn and a silver-jumpsuited female in a clear plastic tube. Shots of Horn and Geoff Downes are shown during the remainder of the video.

Broadcasting and reception

The video was first released in 1979, when it originally aired on the BBC's Top of the Pops for promotion of the single, rather than doing live performances. 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." The video is best known as marking the debut of MTV, when the US channel started broadcasting at 12:01 AM on 1 August 1981. On 27 February 2000, it became the one-millionth video to be aired on MTV. It also opened MTV Classic in the UK and Ireland, which replaced VH1 Classic on 1 March 2010, at 6 AM. The video marked the closing of MTV Philippines before its shutdown on 15 February 2010 at 11:49 PM. MTV co-founder Bob 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."

Cover versions

Year	Artist	Album
1979	Ringo	Qui est ce grand corbeau noir
1993	Jun'ichi Kanemaru	Inspired Colors
1998	The Presidents of the United States of America	Pure Frosting
1999	Lolita No.18	ヤリタミン (YALITAMIN)
2000	Ken Laszlo	Ken Laszlo 2000
2003	Erasure	Other People's Songs
2004	Dragonheart
2005	Amber Pacific	Punk Goes 80's
2005	Ben Folds Five	Whatever and Ever Amen
2005	Len	The Diary of the Madmen (in hidden track)
2005	Maria Doyle Kennedy	Skull Cover
2007	Alvin and the Chipmunks	Alvin and the Chipmunks video game
2007	Envy & Other Sins
2007	The Feeling	Rosé (CD single)
2007	Haruko Momoi	COVER BEST — Cover Densha
2008	Bitch Alert	Pink Bunnies Get Hit by Big Trucks
2009	V V Brown	Travelling Like the Light
2011	Pentatonix	The Sing-Off: Season 3: Episode 5 - Guilty Pleasures
2011	Shugo Tokumaru
2012	Young London	Single
2012	Joyce Manor	Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired
2012	Superbus	Sunset
2014	Pomplamoose	Season Two

In July 2013, multiple independent artists covered "Video" for the launch of the TV channel Pivot, which launched with the music video of the cover on 1 August at 6AM.

In other media

"Video Killed the Radio Star" was sampled in Nicki Minaj (left) and will.i.am's (right) "Check It Out".

• Five clues about the song have appeared on the American quiz show Jeopardy!: "On August 1, 1981 this channel aired its first video, titled "Video Killed the Radio Star"" on 25 May 1998, "On Aug. 1, 1981 MTV aired its first video, this one by the Buggles" on 18 November 1998, "In a hit by the Buggles, it's what "killed the radio star"" on 4 September 2002, "Killer of "the radio star" in a Buggles song" on 13 June 2011, and "On Aug. 1, 1981 this channel debuted with a video by The Buggles; the channel is still around, but not so much into videos" on 1 August 2013.
• The recording by The Presidents of the United States of America features in The Wedding Singer soundtrack.
• "Video Killed the Radio Star" appears on the soundtrack for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and in the game itself on the pop station Flash FM.
• The song is used twice in Sarah Polley's 2011 film Take this Waltz; once midway through, and again during the closing scene. It is played as an accompaniment to the Scrambler ride in Toronto's Centre Island.
• The song is used in the 1990s film Empire Records starring Anthony LaPaglia, Liv Tyler and Renée Zellweger and is included in the film's soundtrack.
• In June 2000, The Broad Band (consisting of Mark Cohn and Ken Martin) released a parody entitled "Internet Killed the Video Star".
• The 2010 single "Check It Out" by will.i.am and Nicki Minaj heavily samples "Video Killed the Radio Star".
• The track is featured in the film Take Me Home Tonight starring an ensemble cast with Topher Grace and Anna Faris and is included in its soundtrack.
• In 2009, Robbie Williams titled his eighth album Reality Killed the Video Star. The album was produced by Trevor Horn. Williams also performed the song live in the BBC Electric Proms that year, with Horn playing bass.

Charts and certifications

Chart performance

Weekly charts

Year	Chart	Peak position
1979–1980	Australia (Kent Music Report)	1
	Austria (Ö3 Austria Top 40)	1
	Belgium (Ultratop 50 Flanders)	12
	Belgium (VRT Top 30 Flanders)	7
	Canada Top Singles (RPM)	6
	Europe (Eurochart Hot 100)	1
	France (IFOP)	1
	Germany (Official German Charts)	2
	Ireland (IRMA)	1
	Italy (FIMI)	1
	Japan (Oricon International Chart)	1
	Japan (Oricon Singles Chart)	25
	Netherlands (Dutch Top 40)	17
	Netherlands (Single Top 100)	16
	New Zealand (Recorded Music NZ)	2
	South Africa (Springbok Radio)	6
	Spain (AFE)	1
	Sweden (Sverigetopplistan)	1
	Switzerland (Schweizer Hitparade)	1
	UK Singles (Official Charts Company)	1
	US Billboard Hot 100	40
	US Cash Box	40
2006	UK Singles (Official Charts Company)	167
2013	France (SNEP)	190

Year-end charts

Year	Chart	Position
1979	Australia (Kent Music Report)	18
	Belgium (Ultratop 50 Flanders)	94
	France (IFOP)	3
1980	Australia (Kent Music Report)	46
	Austria (Ö3 Austria Top 40)	14
	Canada (RPM Top Singles)	30
	Germany (Media Control Charts)	43
	Italy (FIMI)	1

Sales and certifications

Region	Certification	Sales/shipments
France (SNEP)	Platinum	1,212,000
Spain (PROMUSICAE)	Gold	50,000
United Kingdom (BPI)	Gold	500,000
*sales figures based on certification alone ^shipments figures based on certification alone xunspecified figures based on certification alone

Order of precedence
Preceded by "Computer Games" by Mi-Sex	Australian Kent Music Report number-one single 3 December 1979 – 14 January 1980 (7 weeks)	Succeeded by "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" by Michael Jackson
Preceded by "We Don't Talk Anymore" by Cliff Richard	Austrian number-one single 1 January 1980 – 1 February 1980 (5 weeks)	Succeeded by "I Have a Dream" by ABBA
Preceded by "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" by ABBA	Eurochart Hot 100 number-one single 2 January 1980 – 9 January 1980 (2 weeks)
	Japanese Oricon International Chart number-one single 10 March 1980 – 7 April 1980 (5 weeks)	Succeeded by "Body Language" by The Dooleys
	Swiss number-one single 9 December 1979 – 16 December 1979 (2 weeks)	Succeeded by "Todesengel" by Frank Duval & Orchestra
Preceded by "Je l'aime à mourir" by Francis Cabrel	French IFOP number-one single 23 November 1979 – 1 February 1980 (11 weeks)	Succeeded by "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" by Pink Floyd
Preceded by "My Sharona" by The Knack	Italian number one single 15 March 1980 – 14 June 1980 (14 weeks)	Succeeded by "L'ape Maia" by Katia Svizzero
Preceded by "Man Gave Names to All the Animals" by Bob Dylan	Spanish number one single 3 March 1980 – 24 March 1980 (4 weeks)	Succeeded by "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang
Preceded by "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" by Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer	Swedish number-one single 8 February 1980 (1 week)	Succeeded by "Himmel No. 7 / Flickorna på TV2" by Gyllene Tider
Preceded by "Message in a Bottle" by The Police	Irish Singles Chart number-one single 21 October 1979 – 28 October 1979 (2 weeks)	Succeeded by "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" by ABBA
	UK Singles Chart number-one single 20 October 1979 (1 week)	Succeeded by "One Day at a Time" by Marilyn Sellars
Preceded by "Tu sei l'unica donna per me" by Alan Sorrenti 1979	Italian best-selling single of the year 1980	Succeeded by "(Out Here) On My Own" by Nikka Costa 1981

Accolades

Publication/TV Show/Author(s)	Country	Accolade	Year	Rank
20 to 1	Australia	Top 20 One Hit Wonders	2006	3
Bruce Pollock	United States	The 7,500 Most Important Songs of 1944-2000	2005	*
Giannis Petridis	Greece	2004 of the Best Songs of the Century	2003
Gilles Verlant, Thomas Caussé	France	3000 Rock Classics	2009
The Guardian	United Kingdom	The Top 100 British Number 1 Singles		53
Hervé Bourhis	France	Le Petit Livre Rock: The Juke Box Singles 1950-2009	2009	*
Les Inrockuptibles		1000 Indispensable Songs	2006
Mashable	United States	32 Unforgettable Music Videos	2013
MSN Music	United Kingdom	Best Song Titles Ever	2003	19
NBC-10	United States	The 30 Best Songs of the 80s	2006	*
Pause & Play		Songs Inducted into a Time Capsule, One Track at Each Week
PopMatters		The 100 Best Songs Since Johnny Rotten Roared	2003	73
Q	United Kingdom	The 1010 Songs You Must Own (Q50: One-hit Wonders)	2004	*
Time	United States	Top 10 MTV Moments	2010
Time Out	United Kingdom	100 Songs That Changed History		100
Triple J Hottest 100	Australia	Hottest 100 of All Time	1998	79
VH1	United States	100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the 80's	2009	40
		100 Greatest Videos	2001	79
Volume!	France	200 Records that Changed the World	2008	*
Xfinity	United States	Top 10 Groundbreaking Videos		10
WhatCulture!		10 Controversial Music Videos That Look Tame Today	2013	*
WOXY.com		The 500 Best Modern Rock Songs of All Time	2008	348
All accolades are adapted from Acclaimed Music, except if cited by an additional source. "*" indicates the list is unordered.

Personnel

Sources:

• Trevor Horn – songwriter, producer, bass, vocals
• Geoff Downes – songwriter, producer, keyboards, percussion
• Bruce Woolley – songwriter, guitar
• Paul Robinson – drums
• Debi Doss – backing vocals
• Linda Jardim – backing vocals
• Dave Birch – lead guitar
• Gary Langan – mixer, recording
• Hugh Padgham – recording, audio engineering
• John Dent – mastering

See also

Suggested reading

• The Jazz Singer is a 1927 U.S. film notable for being the first "talking motion picture" to be widely commercially distributed.
• Singin' in the Rain is a musical film that explores the transition from silent film to sound film.
• Sunset Boulevard explores how sound film and television led to the demise of films and silent stars.
• "Radio Ga Ga", a single by Queen, also laments the demise of radio as the primary mass medium.
• "Internet Killed the Video Star", a 2010 song by The Limousines

No. 1 chart lists

• List of number-one singles in Australia during the 1970s
• List of number-one singles from 1968–79 (Switzerland)
• List of UK Singles Chart number ones of the 1970s
• List of European number-one hits of 1980
• List of number-one singles and albums in Sweden

Release history

Region	Date(s)	Format	Label
United Kingdom	7 September 1979	7"	Island Records
Italy	23 October 1979
United States	October 1979, June 1983
United States	October 1979	7" – Promotional
Australia	1979	7"
Canada
France
Germany
Ireland
Japan
Netherlands
New Zealand
Spain

External links

• "Video Killed the Radio Star" music video at MTV.com (Windows Media format)
• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics