Meaning
Recorded in 1983 and released in January 1984, the song was a commentary on television overtaking radio's popularity and how one would listen to radio for a favorite comedy, drama, or science fiction programme. It also pertained to the advent of the music video and MTV. Ironically, the video for "Radio Ga Ga" would become a regular staple on MTV in 1984, and was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award that year. Taylor originally conceived of it as "Radio caca" (from something his toddler son once said), which doubled as a criticism of radio for the decrease in variety of programming and the type of music being played. "Radio Ga Ga" in one of the original cassette boxes is called 'radio ca ca'.
The song makes reference to two important radio events of the 20th century; Orson Welles' 1938 broadcast of H.G. Wells' 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".
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Famous quotes containing the word meaning:
“Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one’s will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.”
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)
“Even in my own writings I cannot always recover the meaning of my former ideas; I know not what I meant to say, and often get into a regular heat, correcting and putting a new sense into it, having lost the first and better one. I do nothing but come and go. My judgement does not always forge straight ahead; it strays and wanders.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Delusions that shrink to the size of a woman’s glove,
Then sicken inclusively outwards:
. . . the incessant recital
Intoned by reality, larded with technical terms,
Each one double-yolked with meaning and meaning’s rebuttal:
For the skirl of that bulletin unpicks the world like a knot....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)