#radiogaga

[00radiogaga00]

[1980sand1990smusicclassics]

Queen - Radio Ga Ga (Official Video)

"Radio Ga Ga" is a 1984 song by the British rock band Queen, written by their drummer Roger Taylor. It was released as a single with "I Go Crazy" by Brian May as the B-side. It was included as the opening track on the album The Works and is also featured on the band's compilation albums Greatest Hits II and Classic Queen.

Although Queen had long had individual songwriting contributions from all members, this marked the first time a song individually credited to Taylor was chosen as the A-side of a single in their home country (Calling All Girls had been a minor hit in the US and Canada in 1982).

The song, which makes a nostalgic defence of the radio format, was a worldwide success for the band, reaching number one in 19 countries, number two on the UK singles chart and the Australian Kent Music Report and number 16 on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming the band's final original single to reach the US top 40 in Freddie Mercury's lifetime on that chart (whereas their follow-up singles would give them frequent top 40 appearances on the Mainstream Rock chart). The band performed the song at every concert from 1984 to their last concert with lead singer Freddie Mercury in 1986, including their performance at Live Aid in 1985.

The music video for the song uses footage from the 1927 silent science fiction film Metropolis. It received heavy rotation on music channels and was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award in 1984.

"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:

That's part of what the song's about, really. The fact that they [music videos] seem to be taking over almost from the aural side, the visual side seems to be almost more important.

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".

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.

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).

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".

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.

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.

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" and said "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.

[misskilljoy-lothbrok]

Trenutno čitam Mark Blejka i neispročanu priču o grupi Queen. Veoma interesantna priča za ljubitelje grupe, dobre i kvalitetne muzike. U to ime, Fredi i Radio Gaga za ovo divno prolećno jutro. • Radio Gaga - Queen • #queen#radiogaga #ilustracija #fredimercury #freddymercury #fredimerkjuri #rocksong #rokmuzika #rokcitati #citati #posteri #posterizaprodaju #posterizazid #onlineprodaja #lineart #wallart #umetnicajeca #froyavalkyrie #kreativnostradostigra #umetnost #umetnostkažemože #budvanskiumetnici #umetnostbudva #leto2021 #ulepšajprostor #dizajnerka #dizajnerkajeca #vebdizajner #grafickidizajner #procreate (at Citadela) https://www.instagram.com/p/CNEyno5rAQZ/?igshid=myyn737swrza

[oscark]

4. Radio

All we hear is radio ga ga

[lackycorner]

Glam Polish Radio Ga Ga is this weeks reader’s choice. Read more on my blog, link in bio. - - #glampolish #radiogaga #readerschoice #notd #manicure #swatch #nails #nailpolish #nailpolishaddict #nailstagram #nailsofinstagram #nails2inspire #instanails #ignails https://www.instagram.com/p/B87ELrPAZTi/?igshid=efadiipjg5zt

[ylly22]

[glamandrock]

Top 6 Queen Performances

One of the many reasons why Queen won the hearts of generations and generations to come was the band's ability to perform. They managed to make arenas feel like personal gigs. Of course, Queen put all their heart and soul into every performance, but these six performances were the ones that stood out the most to me.

6. Bohemian Rhapsody (Hammersmith Odeon)

https://youtu.be/VucVi1UGlKI

This was the show that gave Bohemian Rhapsody its fame that still lives on today. What made this one of Queen’s best performances was the passion and emotion Freddie put in it, as he did in the song itself. It wasn’t only Freddie who had been touched by the song, it seemed to also be the band and the audience. There was also a beautiful and seamless transition from Bohemian Rhapsody to Killer Queen.

5. We Will Rock You (Live in Montreal)

https://youtu.be/_uVb7Ju8VQk

Coming in at number five is the We Will Rock You performance. From the very beginning, I could tell this performance had to be one of my favorites. The show began with Roger putting everything into his drum solo. Then Deacy and Brian came in showing off their utter talent. Then Freddie came in wearing nothing more than a red bandana and tiny white shorts. Some say he took “Less is more” a little too far, but I say he knew exactly what he was doing. Between the loudness of the instruments, the power in Freddie’s voice, and the high energy crowd, saying that Queen rocked that performance would be an understatement.

4. Now I’m Here (Hammersmith Odeon)

https://youtu.be/uvOuRt_BiRI

This performance was absolutely perfect. In fact, I prefer it to the studio version because it sounds so great. Freddie tossed his beautiful 70s hair back and forth about 50 times adding that charisma that made him so famous in the first place. His voice was stronger than ever. Roger, John, and Brian were amazing in their over-the-top glam rock outfits, and all had a stunning performance. Brian also seemed to show a lot of his Freddie-like dance moves such as dancing around the stage and kneeling before the audience, which is priceless.

3. Keep Yourself Alive (The Rainbow)

https://youtu.be/wBrb0jIR2_8

This is by far one of my all time favorite songs to bang my head to. What's great about this performance is that it’s so great most fans listen to it live rather than the studio version. Freddie didn’t even sing the same lyrics he wrote for the song, and though it was probably not supposed to happen, you really couldn’t tell because he truly sold the performance. Despite this being Queen’s earlier performances at a very small venue, it was the band’s first concert to make headlines.

2. Radio Ga Ga (Live Aid)

https://youtu.be/0omja1ivpx0

It’s no surprise that Queen’s iconic Live Aid performance made it on this list. There are a number of reasons why this show was so memorable. Firstly, Freddie was practically exploding with energy. He strutted, danced and jumped across the stage without losing his breath which is absolutely remarkable. He also (like he regularly does) made every single person in the giant Wembley stadium do the infamous Radio Ga Ga clap, seen in the very 80’s music video. There was also the powerful notes Freddie added towards the end of the performance. Probably topping all these reasons was the adorable tongue thing at the end.

1. Love of my Life (The Wembley)

https://youtu.be/jO9C7frk2ss

Topping this list is the legendary Love of my Life performance live at The Wembley. Starting with Brian May’s drastic change from his infamous electric guitar shredding to the romantic and emotionally overpowering acoustic solo, it’s almost impossible for me to watch this without crying. As always, Freddie’s voice was brilliant, but what really made this my most memorable Queen performance was Freddie’s connection with the audience. An arena of thousands of people singing their hearts out to one of the band’s more emotional songs is truly a sight to see and hear.

[maovi-os]

Roger Taylor + Outfits