Video Killed The Radio Star - The Buggles (Video Analysis)

"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.

Production and concept:

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, andvocals. Downes used a Solina, Minimoog and Prophet-5 to create the overdubbed orchestral parts. Both the male and female voices differ to give a tonal 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.

The video 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'sTop 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."

Analysis:

Music videos are indicative of the development of media and culture, and that music videos have similar characteristics to advertising and Jazz music as they were perceived as a negative aspect for our developing society and would affect our current 'Stability' as videos allowed audiences to gain deeper meaning into the motivations behind the producers. Artists and producers were now empowered to express themselves not only through the linguistic meaning and interpretation of the lyrics but through the visual representation of our culture and modern day society. This opened up a new prospect for the music industry and for artists on the global scale as through the hypodermic needle theory, the audience are passed the hidden or sometimes evident ideology. 'Video killed the radio star' by the Buggles was the first music video broadcast on the redefining MTV channel. It is an ironic reflection on the 'Golden age' of the radio' and a unique portrayal of our postmodern society. In post modernistic society the texts main function is to be read by an academic audience who can interpret its metaphorical and literal meaning in order to stimulate an intellectual. 

The television as a medium has been seen as the embodiment of our postmodern society and the song this can be 'ironically' distinguished in 'Video killed the Radio star'. In context, the video is an expression on the cultural view at the time, whereby space travel and the exploration of the universe was becoming more proliferated and at the forefront of the media, and this reflected in the video. Also the video deals with gender issues of the time, and the struggle to live and survive in a postmodern culture. Finally, it deals with the problematic issue that audiences were becoming more disconnected and disjointed from society with the proliferation and advancement of technology.

The title of the song is particularly significant in creating an immediate impression on the audience and establishing the narrative for the music video. 'Video killed the radio star', is an ironic reflection as it is modern day pop song reflecting on the past using a range of different techniques including the use of a futuristic synthesizer and postmodern ideas of the audience using music videos as a way of surveillance and to keep up with the ever changing norms and values. It is also a reflection on society’s social change from the radio being the main medium in transferring the upper classes ideological messages directly to the audience, to the television and videos dominating the ideological control.

The mechanistic approaches portrayed in this video through the different technical elements are reflective of society’s conversion to a digitalised age and a sign of the disconnection with reality. This can also be seen throughout the video as a reoccurring theme for example, the beginning of the video opens with a slow zoom out from a medium shot focusing the audience on the image of the glowing moon, as it appearing in the centre of the rule of thirds over layered with shimmering water. This links into the space age of technological development as the audience are gazing at the moon as a signifier of wonder and amazement in human history. This can be seen contextually in other music artists of this period, of the paranoia and ideology of the space age for example 'The Carpenters' produced a track called, 'Space Encounters' in 1798, which showed the audiences fascination which the new culturally established normality which shows the broad nature and extent of this popular ideology.  

This is also an insight into the of the idealistic view of the 'Golden age' of the radio. The producers are giving the audience a view of the past and contrasting it with the new age of the media. The camera continues to pull out as there is an explosion off centre. This has connotations of the powerless nature of the simplistic, ideology of the world, which is submissive to the technological era. This reiterates the metaphorical meaning of the video that the naturalistic and creative spirit of people has been withdrawn. The initial soundtrack of the video is a soft tempo piano which further reinforces the message that society has become non-traditional and subjective. 

The black and white main character has a mechanised overlay over his dialogue where the vocals have a limited bandwidth. This is symbolic of the idealistic view of the past as a simplistic and individualistic period of time. This is a constant theme in the music video and establishes his importance and power within this music video. The black and white gives the character a nostalgic presence, which contrasts with his initial role as the powerful figure. He acts as a narrator and observer on the change in society, and is resembling of the past and his identity is lost through the development of technology. 

The use of the radio microphone is symbolic of the age of the character and acts as a metaphor for the past. Another example in this media text of the mechanisation of the instruments. There is a medium shot focusing on a male playing the piano. The camera then moves in a diagonal line to reveal television screen, where a drum is hit twice. This is to represent that creative elements for example musical instruments were becoming digitalised. The musicians are disjointed from society. This is seen firstly through the facial expressions of the characters which are emotionless and disconnected from their individualistic natures. Also can be seen through their demeanour as they are robotic in their movements and monotonous. 

The Mise en scene of the characters and also reflects the mechanisation of our society. The main vocal character is wearing a plain white coat, which is a reference to the educated professionals such as scientists or doctors, which refers to creative progress of the music industry which has been reduced and mechanised. It also establishes his authority and hierarchical status in society, which has references to the male domination and to represent is an unequal gender balance. Also the radio microphone attached the glasses shows his attachment to the digital world. The passive characters formed in this music video also reflect the nature of the main culture phenomenon. The characters are wearing silver reflective clothing to represent the futuristic nature of the digital age.

The young female character plays an important role as she is used by the producers as a metaphorical image for the development from adolescence to adulthood and maturity in a postmodern society. Her adolescence has been expressed through her Mise en scene, of the stereotypical apparel, red dungaree. This is typical attire of the time period of a young girl. There is a long shot of the child in the centre of the frame. The character is literally a fractured, broken and pixelated image relating to metaphorical instability in a fracture in a consumerist society where her establishment of individualism is non-existent. The explosions around her reinforce the metaphorical meaning of her fading away from reality and the societal norm. This is coupled, synchronised and combined with the visual representation and the lyrics, “Video killed the radio star” which reiterates the change and fluidity of our ever changing characteristic society. This can also be seen when there is a long shot of the girl changing into adulthood. This transition is shown to be a demystified emotionless process, which is oppositional to society's view. 

The futuristic woman is submissive to the world as her actions and presence becomes robotic. There is also a medium shot of the woman in a test tube which is ironic as the woman is been treated a laboratory test subject. Her emotionless passive nature shows her disconnection from society and her inability to cope. She attempts to escape from the test tube with no hope, which represents her entrapment in our society. It also highlights key feminist theoretical issues, as there is a gender imbalance with the power given to the male characters as they survey and analyse the woman as inferior. This is grouped with the lyrics, “We can’t rewind we've gone too far”, showing that post modernism has taken over our society and the possibility to go back to 'golden age' is unlikely. There is then a reaction shot of the girl looking at her futuristic self. This reinforces her fear for the future and the inevitable collapse of childhood in the digitalised world. The child is then seen at the on top of a pile of cartoon radios which resembles the distant nature of the radio as a medium, as the cartoonist image is used as a signifier of the past. 

The next scene is of two television monitors emerging out of the ground. They are seen as fracturing the studio in a literal sense but are representing wider society and how the establishment of the television is fracturing and dividing our society. This movement is repeated with multiple camera shots to represent the power and dominance is to bring to producers of the future. The lead vocal, follows this sequence with the lyrics, “Pictures came and broke your heart”. This is strengthening the meaning and connotations of the visuals.

There is then a medium shot of main vocals on a television screen, pointing audience. The digital vocals are echoed and sustained, which is over layered with the black and white radio star character. This establishes a link with the past and a reflection on the past and old media mediums such as the radio. It highlights the importance of the past technologies such as the radio and reflects on the ideological age, where the audience establishes their own identity, culture and values. The lyrics are synchronized with the image, “Put the blame on VCR”, which demonstrates the ideology of the artist, as the past is the ideal and the future of our consumerist society of greed and a focus on material goods is dividing and destroying our society. Video Killed the Radio star' is a visual and audio presentation of the degeneration of society through the technological advances of our world. It incorporates post modernistic views and has inspired a generation with its interesting concepts and creativity.