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ONE HIT WONDERLAND: “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles

Todd in the Shadows | November 10, 2025



The radio star has been KILLED! MTV = MURDER TELEVISION

Written by Todd in the Shadows

Comments

This post currently has 40 comments.

  2. @davidnissim589

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    Trevor Horn is also credited as a writer on Without Me by Eminem since it samples another song that he produced and co-wrote. Yet another big hit that Trevor unexpectedly contributed to

  3. @toorayay

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    Someone has to have commented on it before but, but the line isn't "put all the blame on VCR", it's "VTR".

    The Presidents of the United States of America get it wrong in their cover.

  7. @MisterPancake778

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    dude WTF does MTV even air anymore, the last thing I remember they did when I tuned in was dumb reality shows of teenage mothers and their struggles, do they even show music related content anymore with bad buttrock and whatever top 40 hits blasting at every opportunity?

  12. @1998_MIN

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    Fun update too: Trevor Horn in 2023 made a covers album of orchestral arrangements of classic songs, some of which he himself originally produced.
    The fun part is that the covers are mostly by other singers, so if you ever wanted to hear Tori Amos cover "Swimming Pools (Drank)", it exists thanks to Horn

  13. @1998_MIN

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    I've watched this episode a good dozen times before. It's probably my second favorite Wonderland episode after Scatman John.

    I legitimately get emotional listening to Video Killed the Radio Star, because it so perfectly captures the melancholy of nostalgia and the inexorable march of time, while also using the newest sounds of the era. It's an absolutely impeccable song.

    More notably, as other recent comments point out, it really cuts deep in the age of generative AI being marketed as the future, because that actually does intend to destroy all artists as we know it, replacing them with a machine, a perverse John Henry fable come to life. Legitimately the worst invention since the atom bomb. And unlike that smug M, who made a song about AI while indulging in it simultaneously, after getting big making a glib song about pop music, the Buggles were very clearly not in favor of the idea of computer generated content even before such technology could be conceived of.

    I'm not the sort of "RETVRN" classics purist who thinks things used to be better by default, and I think this song isn't either, but it still feels like a protest song of sorts against the mechanisms that see artists as products. To an executive, an AI generated response to a prompt of "make a Beatles song" is just as good as an actual Beatles song, because they don't know the first thing about inspiration or craftsmanship. Unfortunately not all purported artists see things like that, such as that tech bro shill Timbaland. Even if the crap excreted by those softwares isn't successful in and of itself, it's a direct threat to actual human artists (and labor) by virtue of devaluing art by flooding the market and sowing seeds of doubt.

    We can't rewind, we've gone too far, indeed.

  15. @clarisse96

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    so basically you are telling me that this niche band literally is the base of music as we know it and keeps being a part of it even decades after they ended? i was now expecting this from a one hit wonder video

  16. @thomaskika6929

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    Random OHW/Trainwreckords crossover I stumbled onto: Trevor Horn also produced There You’ll Be, Faith Hill’s Pearl Harbor movie tie-in single released ahead of Cry.

  23. @ShatteredObjects

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    This is a song about the March of Technology. Oppenheimer and Blackberry are also about that and to me it is one of the most fascinating topics for any piece of art. And it makes the art more lasting because the march of technology just continues.

  31. @FangsonBats

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    Fucking hell this might be Todd's worst one. Obviously taste is subjective but his is at times just rancid, and it gets in the way of his criticism. His comments about "Living in the Plastic Age", "Clean, Clean", and "Elstree" are painful to listen to.

  32. @thebyronicmann

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    Living in the plastic age
    Clean clean
    Elstree
    Hardly a one hit wonder group.
    Add to that ZTT records spearheading Seal and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
    This is the problem with Gen Z no idea of the world let alone music

  33. @cwoodfield

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    Another bit of trivia, 8 years later: Not only is that Hans Zimmer appearing in the video, but in the Bruce Wooley version, you've got OHW alum Thomas Dolby on keyboards.

  34. @cwoodfield

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    Time for me to be That Guy, 8 years later. The Pet Shop Boys' "Always On My Mind" wasn't produced by Horn; that was Julian Mendelsohn. Horn did produce "Left To My Own Devices" and "It's Alright" – two amazing songs from the same album – and then their "Fundamental" album in the mid-2000s (which gave us the definitive PSB song, "I'm With Stupid").

  36. @ericmckayrq

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    A lot of Yes fans LOVE Drama. I'm a hardcore Yes fan and its my favorite. It grew on everyone overtime. The songs are fantastic back to back, Yes recently started playing the album in its entirety. Two songs from Drama and up in the Beggles 2nd album in a much new wavy form. Also, the Horn's production was exactly what Yes needed BADLY at that point in their career. ALSO, probably Yes' "heaviest" most "energetic" album

  37. @ericmckayrq

    November 10, 2025 at 8:07 am

    17:12…Apparently there were a lot of acts who at claim that they couldn't transistion to music video age….cuz they weren't attractive enough…I believe it it most cases. Christopher Cross is the example I hear most often cited…which is partially true BUT ALSO the follow up to his HUGE debut album in 1978 SUCKED….the Doobie brothers were huge at the end of the 70s…and not cuz of their looks and then petered out….MAYBE cuz of lack of videos…. I think being good looking or at least interesting looing (Thomas Dolby helped a lot)…..Then there a acts that that just did well despite it…..Rush weren't good or interesting looking and did fine in the 80s and had shitty videos

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