Radio Ga Ga

Meaning

"Radio Ga Ga" was released in 1984. A nostalgic defence of radio, it was a commentary on television overtaking radio's popularity and how one would listen to radio in the past for a favourite comedy, drama, or science fiction programme. It also addressed the advent of the music video and MTV, which was then competing with radio as an important medium for promoting records. At the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards the video for "Radio Ga Ga" would receive a Best Art Direction nomination. Roger Taylor was quoted:

The song refers to two important radio events of the 20th century: Orson Welles' 1938 broadcast of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds in the lyric "through wars of worlds/invaded by Mars", and Winston Churchill's 18 June 1940 "This was their finest hour" speech from the House of Commons, in the lyric "You've yet to have your finest hour".

Recording

The inspiration for this song came when Taylor heard his son utter the words "radio ca-ca" while listening to a bad song on the radio while they were in Los Angeles. After hearing the phrase, Taylor began writing and developing the song when he locked himself in a studio for three days with a synthesizer and a LinnDrum drum machine. He thought it would fit his solo album, but when the band heard it, John Deacon wrote a bassline and Freddie Mercury reconstructed the track, thinking it could be a big hit. Taylor then took a skiing holiday and let Mercury polish the song's lyrics, harmony, and arrangements. Recording sessions began at Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles in August 1983 – the band's only time recording in North America. It included Canadian session keyboardist Fred Mandel. Mandel programmed the Jupiter's arpeggiated synth-bass parts. The recording features prominent use of the Roland VP330+ vocoder. The bassline was produced by a Roland Jupiter-8, using the built-in arpeggiator.

Track listings

7" single

• A-side. "Radio Ga Ga" (Album Version)
• B-side. "I Go Crazy" (Single Version)

12" single

• A-side. "Radio Ga Ga" (Extended Version)
• B1. "Radio Ga Ga" (Instrumental Version)
• B2. "I Go Crazy" (Single Version)

Music video

David Mallet's music video for the song features scenes from Fritz Lang's 1927 German expressionist science fiction film Metropolis and also includes footage of the band traveling through Metropolis and singing the song in a stylized re-creation of its underground machine rooms, which is interconnected with people donning gas masks and taking shelter in their homes during wartime and of one such family passing the time in various ways that include listening to the radio. The video also features footage from earlier Queen promo videos. At the end of the music video, the words "Thanks To Metropolis" appear.

The video was filmed at Carlton TV Studios and Shepperton Studios, London, between 23 and 24 November 1983 and January 1984. It led to a 1984 re-release of the film with a rock soundtrack. Mercury's solo song "Love Kills" was used in Giorgio Moroder's restored version of the film, and in exchange, Queen was granted the rights to use footage from it in their "Radio Ga Ga" video. However, Queen had to buy performance rights to the film from the communist East German government, the copyright holder at the time (the film entered the public domain in 2023).

Critical reception

Upon its release as a single, Phil McNeill of Number One believed that "Radio Ga Ga" would be a hit (and accurately predicted it reaching number two in the UK) as "no DJ can resist a record with 'radio' in the title" and the music video "pulls out enough expensive stops to push [it] to the top". However, in a later issue, dated April 14th, guest writer Thomas Dolby called the song "banal", and stated that "it's terrible when such a talented band spend so much time making awful records".

The Police drummer Stewart Copeland reviewed the song for Record Mirror. He wrote that Queen had adopted the current "synthesizer sound" rather than remain "true to their form". He remarked that "it's hard to know whether this is a Duran Duran clone group or a Japan clone group" and added that Mercury's singing "sounds like Bryan Ferry". Charles Shaar Murray, writing for NME, believed that the song "just sounds like a lot of old noises borrowed from newer groups".

Live versions

Queen finished their sets before the encores on The Works Tour with "Radio Ga Ga" and Mercury would normally sing "you had your time" in a lower octave and modify the deliveries of "you had the power, you've yet to have your finest hour" while Roger Taylor sang the pre-chorus in the high octave. Live versions from the 1984/85 tour were recorded and filmed for the concert films Queen Rock in Rio 1985 and Final Live in Japan 1985. As heard on bootleg recordings, Deacon can be heard providing backing vocals to the song; it is one of the very few occasions he sang in concert.

Queen played a shorter, up-tempo version of "Radio Ga Ga" during the Live Aid concert on 13 July 1985 at Wembley Stadium, where Queen's "show-stealing performance" had 72,000 people clapping in unison. It was the second song the band performed at Live Aid after opening with "Bohemian Rhapsody". "Radio Ga Ga" became a live favourite thanks largely to the audience participation potential of the clapping sequence prompted by the rhythm of the chorus (copied from the video). Mercury sang all high notes in this version. The song was played for the Magic Tour a year later, including twice more at Wembley Stadium; it was recorded for the live album Live at Wembley '86, VHS Video and DVD on 12 July 1986, the second night in the venue.

Paul Young performed the song with Queen at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert again at Wembley Stadium on 20 April 1992. At the "Party at the Palace" concert, celebrating Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee in 2002, "Radio Ga Ga" opened up Queen's set with Roger Taylor on vocals and Phil Collins on the drums.

This song was played on the Queen + Paul Rodgers Tour in 2005–2006 and sung by Roger Taylor and Paul Rodgers. It was recorded officially at the Hallam FM Arena in Sheffield on 5 May 2005. The result, Return of the Champions, was released on CD and DVD on 19 September 2005 and 17 October 2005. It was also played on the Rock the Cosmos Tour during late 2008, this time with only Rodgers on lead vocals. The concert album Live in Ukraine resulted from this tour, yet the song is not available on the CD or DVD versions released on 15 June 2009. This "Radio Ga Ga" performance is only available as a digital download from iTunes. It was again played on the Queen + Adam Lambert Tour with Lambert on lead vocals, and again during the Rhapsody Tour of 2019–2024.

Cover versions

Electric Six performed a cover version of "Radio Ga Ga" on their 2005 second album Señor Smoke.

Brian May was reportedly a fan of the Electric Six version.

Personnel

Queen

• Freddie Mercury – lead vocals, synthesizer, sampler
• Brian May – guitars, backing vocals
• Roger Taylor – acoustic and electronic drums, Linndrum drum machine, vocoder, backing vocals, sampler, synthesizer
• John Deacon – bass guitar

Additional personnel

• Fred Mandel – synthesizer arrangement, synthesizer programming, synthesizer
• Reinhold Mack – recording engineer
• Mike Beiriger – additional recording engineer
• Eddie DeLena – additional recording engineer
• Stefan Wissnet – additional recording engineer

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

Legacy

American pop singer Lady Gaga credits her stage name to this song. She stated that she "adored" Queen, and that they had a hit called "Radio Ga Ga". "That's why I love the name".

In Slovenia, the song was used for the opening and ending of a radio show with the same name – a satirical show with host Sašo Hribar – from the first broadcast in 1989 until the final broadcast on 8 September 2023 before Hribar's sudden death.

In January 2023, singer Che Lingo sampled "Radio Ga Ga" for his single "My Radio". The song credits Queen and Roger Taylor as co-lead artists on the single.

References

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