My Top 1000 Songs #796: Video Killed The Radio Star

I took a couple days off... one to work on the election, one to have a good cry over the election. I could use a mental health break right now, and I don't know if it'll be a few days, or four years, or--depending on those four years--much, much longer. (Ironically, our last song here was "Ask Me How I Am"--and the last thing I need is for someone to ask me how I am.)

Still... nothing (aside from friends, family, and cats) aids a mental health break more than music, so I decided I need the distraction.

Gave some thought to plugging in some song to capture this moment... but concluded the best thing for me, maybe for some of you, is to just soldier on with the Top 1000 as is. Which brings us to...

"Video Killed The Radio Star," the 1979 single from short-lived new wave duo The Buggles. Now, it's easy to write this one off as novelty-song kitsch, a one-hit-wonder guilty pleasure, a dated document of the new wave era (and, to be honest, the balance of the 1980 LP on which it appeared, The Age Of Plastic, doesn't exactly hold up).

Plus, there's the historical anomalies that make it hard to listen to this as a simple 3-minute pop song: The video becoming the very first track broadcast when MTV launched in 1981. The duo's improbable merger into a short-lived conglomeration of dinosaur prog act Yes.

But, at heart, it's just an incredibly infectious pop song. Sure, the altered vocals of bespectacled bassist (and future uber-producer) Trevor Horn, coupled with the drum machine and keyboards and chirpy oh-oh's, are thoroughly of-the-moment, and I can't hear this without feeling like I'm back in middle school, seeing the video pop up on late night cable just as I was moving from my classic rock-loving roots into my embrace of more modern music. But what elevates the song beyond mere nostalgia is just how catchy it is. If you've heard it at any point in your life, you can immediately break into that chorus without any prompting at all. And give it a listen--it's far less dated than your imagination tells you. It's a wonder that holds up.

Ben Folds Five cover: