Musical Montage: Queen “Radio Ga Ga”
Coming off their album The Works in 1984, “Radio Ga Ga” became a staple for Queen during their concerts, including their famous performance at Live Aid in 1985. The song was #1 in 19 countries, #2 in the UK, and reached #16 on the Billboard charts in the US. The main reason we’re featuring it in Musical Montage though is the music video, which heavily uses footage from Fritz Lang’s masterpiece Metropolis. The band is seen in a flying car flying over the future city depicted in the film and then they perform for the crowds of workers shown in the film as well. The Metropolis connection came about when the legendary composer and songwriter Giorgio Moroder was working on a new score for a restored version of Metropolis and included Freddy Mercury’s song “Love Kills” in that cut. This allowed Queen the right to use footage from the movie in their video but they also had to negotiate with the Soviet East German government, who retained the performance rights to the film. The song is extremely similar in theme to The Buggles’ “Video Killed The Radio Star” in that it’s commenting on how television and music videos were quickly supplanting the traditional ways of listening to and discovering music, mainly the radio. You can check out the music video for “Radio Ga Ga” below.
