The Buggles - Video Killed The Radio Star

Video Killed the Radio Star" is a New Wave song released in 1979 by the British group Buggles that celebrates the golden days of radio. It tells of a singer whose career is cut short by television. Group member Trevor Horn has said that his lyrics were inspired by the J.G. Ballard short story The Sound-Sweep, in which the title character, a deaf and dumb boy vacuuming up stray music in a world without it, comes upon an opera singer hiding in a sewer. He also felt "an era was about to pass."

The music video for the song, directed by Russell Mulcahy, was the first to be shown on MTV, when the ground-breaking music channel debuted on September 1, 1981, at 12:10 A.M. On February 27, 2000 it also became the millionth video to be aired on MTV.[1]

It was written by Trevor Horn and Courtney Courson, Geoffrey Downes, and Bruce Woolley. The first version was recorded by Woolley & the Camera Club (with Thomas Dolby as a guest artist) for his album English Garden, which was a hit in Canada. The complicated arrangement and production of the song, which includes a chorus sung by a group of very high-pitched backup singers, foreshadows Horn's later career as a producer. The Buggles later recorded the song and it reached number one in the UK charts the week of October 20, 1979, the first-ever number one for label Island Records. It also would top the Australian charts, but only barely made the Billboard Top 40 in the U.S. It appears on the album The Age of Plastic.

The first live performance of the song by Horn and Downes came at a ZTT showcase in 1998.[1] In 2004, The Buggles re-united again with Bruce Woolley at Wembley Arena to perform "Video Killed the Radio Star" and another song ("Living in the Plastic Age") as part of a tribute event to Trevor Horn to raise money for the Prince's Trust charity. They were joined by Debi Doss and Linda Jardim, who performed the background singing on the original recording. Both Horn and Downes have performed the song live in other acts, including Downes in the 2006 revival of Asia 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 the ZTT Records official website of Trevor singing lead vocals and playing bass in a performance of Video Killed The Radio Star.