I have this song on one of my 80s compilation CDs. I know its significance (first video played when MTV went on the air!) and I can make out all the lyrics.
But what does it mean, exactly? Some of it sounds like I could be about how TV (not video, exclusively) displaced the old great radio stars. But other lines don’t seem to fit that, like it might be more about music videos.
They also mention someone’s “Second Symphony” being changed.
So can someone explicate the thing for me?
Here, this may help the armchair detectives.
http://www.davemcnally.com/lyrics/Buggles/VideoKilledTheRadioStar.asp
– Uke, who’s just going to sit back and watch the others try to explain it all to him
I’m pretty certain the ‘Second Symphony’ thing refers to Beethoven’s 2nd. IIRC it was the first long piece of music to be recorded by Moog with the first crude synthesizers.
But I’ve always taken the song to be about the so-called ‘de-personalization’ of the music industry. Instead of being a group of individuals making music it becomes about appearance and corporate marketing rather than talent or inspiration.
What is more satisfying - hearing the William Tell Overture, an announcer’s voice taking us “back to those thrilling days of yesteryear,” and then hearing a hearty “Hi Ho Silver! Away!” and using your mind to fill in all the details, or seeing Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels on a teeny, tiny black and white screen?
TV stunted the world’s imagination.
As an aside, I remember reading Ric Ocasek of the Cars mentioning that they mixed their first album using the speakers from a car so that they could get the mix just right for AM radio. Does anyone even listen to the radio anymore?
Gee, I always thought the lyrics were self-explanatory.
But then again, gimme a shot of Sauza and a Guinness chaser, I can make sense out of just about anything.
Of course, some of us still listen to the radio…if you have a satellite radio :). Regular FM and AM are just crap these days.
Er, as has been said, pretty obvious really.
Video, as in TV images, put and end to radio as the primary source of popular culture’s stars. Most of the lyrics are addressed to an old-time radio star. “I listened to you back in '52” “What do you tell your children?” “I tell them video killed the radio star.”
Radio, in the UK, is apparently making something of a comeback. Listenership is certainly up according to all the stats. I’m not so sure, but as a medium it’s still far from dead.
Now look here dangit, yer making me sound like a complete idiot. It’s all that obvious? The line “blame it all on VCR” makes me think that it can’t just be about TV killing great old time radio. That’s why I’m asking, dagnabbit.
Of maybe it is that obvious, and I’m just a moron. This is not such a farfatched possibility. muses
I’ll go check out the link.
OH. It says VTR, not VCR.
Well, that makes more sense, then. Not sure what VTR is, but the fact that it is NOT VCR makes a big difference in my previous opinion that the song straddles several eras.
I believe a VTR is just a high-end VCR. When I worked at a television station, the nice, expensive video-tape machines were all called VTRs. I assume that high-end VTRs would be involved in the production of music videos, so the line “blame it all on VTR” is still applicable to the song’s theme of newer technology rendering the stars of the previous technology obsolete.
My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that VTR = Video Tape Recorder and VCR = Video Cassette Recorder. VTRs were older, reel-to-reel type machines. (I guess, technically a VCR is also a VTR but the terms allow you to differentiate between a cassette and a reel-to-reel unit.)
The lyrics are awesome when you hear the chorus as, “Lydia killed the rodeo whore!”
ie.:
I met your children,
what did you tell them?
You were the first one.
You were the last one.
Lydia killed the rodeo whore!
Lydia killed the rodeo whore!
In my mind and in my car,
we can’t rewind we’ve gone too far.
Lydia killed the rodeo whore!
You’re a rodeo whore!
I worked at a public station three years ago, and the tape machines were called VTRs. My understanding is that when videotape itself was first introduced (early 60s?), the machines were called “videotape recorders”, or VTRs. After the VCR came along, the name stuck since (after Beta died on the home market) they’re not exactly the same. (Fie on the Presidents of the United States for changing it to “VCR” in their dreadful remake.)
As for the song, I always thought it was referring to only music videos, which were already fairly common in 1979. The “VTR” line seems to back that up, since videotape couldn’t have “killed” the radio stars of the 1930s-40s.
It’s a pop song. There is no great big “statement” being made. I don’t think there is a value judgement implicit in the lyrics. Like lots of cool songs, it’s just a musing with no resolution. There used to be people who were famous for their radio play. Now it is nearly impossible to make an impact on the market without a sharp visual. Isn’t that sad in a “things never stay the same” kind of way? What must it be like to be one of these former radio stars and watch the world change around you?
Take these ideas, throw in some pseudo-spooky/spine-tingling imagery like a young man listening to his radio late at night and listening to nameless songs in an abandoned studio, and then (this is the most important part) make it all rhyme catchily and you got yourself a pop song. There is no meaning beyond that. That’s why I like pop songs.
By the way…I’m pretty sure that VTR and VCR are the same thing. I believe VTR is either the older name or the European name or both. In Japan they still call them VTR (no one ever knows what I’m talking about when I say “VCR”), and I always figured that since Buggles was British, they said VTR instead of VCR.
By the other way…the lyrics in Ukelele Ike’s link are a little off, I’m pretty sure. “Lying awake intent at tuning in on you” is wrong, isn’t it?
Lying awake intent on tuning in on you, IIRC.
Minor hijack: If you hunt around at shockwave.com, yuo can find “Internet Killed the Video Star,” a hilarious Flash video. I may be able to email it to those who can’t find it themselves.