Buggles - Pioneers of the Video, Killers of the Radio

The name The Buggles is one instinctively familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of pop music straddling the '70s and '80s. Credit goes largely to the synth-pop super-hit "Video Killed The Radio Star" (1979), a worldwide success that for a few months really seemed to fulfill the ambitions of the duo formed by Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, projecting their sound into the following decade. Things turned out a little differently, but it's never too late to retrace a curious and farsighted musical story, one that made an important contribution to the evolution of popular music.

The Buggles formed in London in 1977, the golden year of punk, but they were decidedly aiming at other sonic horizons. Their very name, both a joke and a tribute to the Beatles (a blend of "bugs" and the name of the Liverpool quartet), symbolizes both their ambition to reach the heights of music and their obsessive attention to the studio recording and composing process. The duo are complete musicians and composers, and even though the adjective "pop", paired with "synth", is often used to describe their music, their background is actually closer to that of a prog band, as shown by their refined arrangements and keyboard and synth textures.

At the same time, the idea behind the project was explicitly to build the music "of the future", and from here come the premises underpinning their first album, an almost-concept record that sounds like the soundtrack to a dystopian science-fiction film: The Age Of Plastic. The album came out in January 1980, with a cover (Horn on the front, Downes on the back) featuring cartoonish images of both musicians with a plug entering their necks, as if to demonstrate the artificial nature of their work, passing them off as automatons or electric androids. The band's name echoes the graphics of digital devices' displays, which were just then becoming widespread, and the title seems to pick up the famous line from "The Graduate" thirteen years later and turn it into a musical vision imagining what that famous future world, whose watchword is "plastic", would actually sound like. And in that era it really did seem that a hyper-technological future was just around the corner: William Gibson's cyberpunk fiction, the growing success of science fiction on screen ("Star Wars", "Alien", "Blade Runner" but also "Tron", released in 1982), and above all an expanding multimedia universe, with the growing spread of private broadcasters and cable TV already promising, at the start of the decade, a world of computers, robots, microchips and flying cars. And it was precisely the cathode-ray tube that allowed the Buggles to visually express this mirage too, when on August 1, 1981, at exactly one minute past noon, the video for "Video Killed The Radio Star" was chosen to kick off broadcasting on the newly launched MTV. The song, selected by the network despite the critical subtext of its lyrics, would become an eternal hit if only for that reason alone.

The song's video is still universally known, and it sums up not only the band's artistic vision but an entire aesthetic of the era, one that looked to the future with a mix of excitement and regret. Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes play in a futuristic studio full of keyboards and tape reels, dressed like scientists, while a girl trapped inside a tube dances (famously, as the story goes, she had to stay in there for hours, until filming wrapped) and a screen broadcasts it all in real time. Meanwhile, a little girl, who represents innocent childhood corrupted by new technology, witnesses the explosion of an old radio (the triumph of the new "video" dimension over the old "audio" one) and stares at the dancer in the tube, who could be herself in a future devoid of prospects. A little trivia: among the musicians we can also catch a glimpse of a young Hans Zimmer on keyboards, shown on screen for just a few seconds.

The song was actually written back in 1979 with a contribution from Bruce Woolley, initially part of the lineup, who left shortly afterward to record his own (little-known) version of the song that same year with his band, The Camera Club, which also included a baby-faced Thomas Dolby. In the version everyone knows, recorded by Downes and Horn, the song opens with the famous piano notes that introduce it, before making way for Horn's voice, which seems to come out of a loudspeaker from another era. The contrast between old and new, as throughout the duo's music, plays out in the pairing of piano, bass and drums as the main instruments with voices, backing vocals, digital effects, keyboards and synths as additions and ornaments. The female vocals, courtesy of Linda Jardim-Allen and Debi Doss, accompany the succession of verses with the famous "Ow-ah ow-ah", which (deliberately) recalls certain vocal devices from the 1960s, while the piano sets the main rhythm against which Horn's voice bounces in time, in a kind of almost atonal rap. The refrain is the explosion of the future, embellished by descending synth notes that create a sense of wonder and oppression at once. After two verses and a variation featuring a brief prog keyboard solo (reminiscent of Tony Banks's style), the final climax is also entrusted to a very understated guitar accompaniment. The song fades out and we hear the piano alone rise up, played by Downes, who skillfully gives us a brief Romantic-classical-style rendition of the song with further embellishments and synth counterpoints, before the intrusive looped "Ow-ah ow-ah" bursts back in to shatter the impression.

The song is central to the band's body of work because it embodies their entire poetics, at least for this first album: a laconic vision of a nostalgic past now gone, set against the arrival of a frightening but inevitable future. "In my mind and in my head/ We can't rewind, we've gone too far", sings Horn, describing a rupture between before and after as traumatic and marked by a technological revolution that at times even seems to anticipate present-day nightmares. Revealing, for instance, is the line: “Si sono presi il credito per la tua seconda sinfonia/ Riscritta dalle macchine con la nuova tecnologia/ E ora posso capire i problemi che puoi vedere”. If we think of the rise of AI in creating songs with algorithms that imitate famous artists, or simply to replace the human touch altogether, these words really do sound prophetic.

Either way, even though digital technology was already on the verge of taking over, the "problems" feared by Horn and Downes mainly lay in the revolution of video, of MTV and of an ever-present TV that now broadcasts around the clock (not by chance, Ted Turner's CNN was also launched in 1980). Alongside video, appearance and form took on a leading role as never before. The supreme irony, perfectly in line with the ideas of the time, is that the Buggles were both critics and protagonists of this very change.

The Age of Plastic and the synthetic future

The first album was recorded in 1979 and, when it came out at the start of the following year, immediately proved to be something revolutionary, setting the pace of a synth-pop sound that was not, however, an entirely original invention. Also in 1979, Gary Numan had gotten there first with his celebrated debut album "The Pleasure Principle", as well as the even more legendary "Replicas" credited to Tubeway Army, not to mention the pioneering work of Germany's Kraftwerk throughout the '70s, Japan's Yellow Magic Orchestra led by Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the Sparks album "No. 1 In Heaven", with a hand from our own Giorgio Moroder. In those same months, bands like Ultravox and The Human League were moving in neighboring territory, while it would be just one more year before the release of Depeche Mode's debut, "Speak And Spell", and the self-titled debut LP by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, which actually came out in 1980, soon followed by the famous hit "Enola Gay" (later included on "Organisation"). But the Buggles stood out thanks to an overarching vision that, in some way, was missing from the work of all these other artists: a record that gathered their ideas into a concept about the future, technology, change, depersonalization and corruption, bearing the suitably emphatic title The Age Of Plastic.

The title track that opens the album already sets the tone for the whole record's sound, and begins painting pictures of a sort of warped Jetsons-style scenario, in a gap between past and future that is also reflected in the use of acoustic instrumental backing (mainly bass, drums and piano, but here and there also a bit of '70s rock guitar) decorated, however, with synth flourishes and digital embellishments, built to give the music that very "plastic" quality for which it stands out. The lyrics tell of a hurried, paranoid, fast and immediate life, lived amid technological wonders and nightmares, in a growing loss of humanity and a downward spiral of corruption: "Every day my metal friend shakes my bed at six a.m./ Then the shiny servant clones run in with my telephones". Notable and satirical is the refrain: "They send the heart police to put you under cardiac arrest/ And while they drag you through the door they tell you that you failed the test".

Every track sounds like a short dystopian science-fiction story: "Kid Dynamo" is a piece of synth-rock describing an idealized youth of the new era, almost Hitlerian in his immersion in, and travel through, a reality even faster than light speed. A narrative prog characterization, with skillfully interwoven melodies, leads into a choral refrain with dynamic guitar bursts that really seem to translate the idea of this unreachable, unstoppable youth. "I Love You Miss Robot" says it all right there in the title, telling of a mechanical lover, a metaphor for a passionate female coldness that is actually very contemporary ("You make love like a metronome"). The music follows these aseptic traits accordingly, with a masked, properly "robotic" voice and clean, inhuman synth textures, almost mechanical in nature. Yet the melody always emerges, imperious, never letting us forget that what we're listening to is, after all, still a pop song.

"Clean, Clean" refers to the world of business and the cutthroat competitiveness of the 1980s, in which some desperately try to keep the game "clean" while everyone else tears each other apart; just think of a Jordan Belfort to get a clear picture of the idea. For this reason too, the track moves at an agitated pace, with synths and keyboards building architectural visions that almost seem to recall the growing metropolises of the 1980s and the frenetic life animating them. The inspired repetition of the word in the title also serves as a memorable, simple refrain, while Downes's keyboards remain firmly in charge, sketching out simple, memorable note sequences.

Closing out the record, the promises of the future are finally summed up in "Johnny On The Monorail", where the monorail stands for the fast vehicle that lets you race at unheard-of speed, here and now, through a future that would otherwise be too vast and distant: "Oh God you're so science fiction/ Won't you let me take a ride?". Here, more than in the previous tracks, it really does feel like listening to music of the future, a film soundtrack in which the new sounds of the '80s appear as colorful visions of an imminent, thundering future. This, despite the ever-present bony structure provided by "traditional" instruments, which hold the whole thing together, later rendered dazzling and blinding by keyboards and digital effects, like ultramodern buildings erected on the ruins of old houses and tenements.

The whole album is remarkable and perfectly consistent with its concept, but despite the success of the first single, it soon became clear that the Buggles' miracle of success was not destined to last. Victims of that very same frenzied multimedia landscape they themselves had been the first to foresee, after the success of "Video Killed The Radio Star" they sank into the reputation of being a "one hit wonder", which is still, in fact, how they're remembered today. And it's a serious mistake to see them that way, because their activity certainly didn't stop there. Starting with their improbable, unpredictable entry into Yes, the band in which Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes replaced, respectively, Jon Anderson (!) and Rick Wakeman (!), recording the 1980 album "Drama" alongside Chris Squire, Steve Howe and Alan White. A commercially unsuccessful album, which nonetheless did not mark the end of the duo's collaboration with the legendary English prog band.

In 1981, in fact, Downes brought Howe's talent along to found, together with Carl Palmer and John Wetton, the famous Asia, an arena-rock band that scored a huge hit in 1982 with the single "Heat Of The Moment", which he co-wrote. Horn, for his part, continued to work with Yes as producer of the 1983 album "90125", which contains another massive hit of that decade, "Owner Of A Lonely Heart", which he also co-wrote. The bond between the Buggles and Yes thus had time to leave its mark on music history at two further pivotal moments before fading away (though not entirely: Horn would also produce the 1987 album "Big Generator").

The recording studio: the new frontier

In 1981, the Buggles were preparing to record their second (and ultimately final) album, Adventures In Modern Recording. But on the very first day scheduled for recording, Downes walked out to join Asia, a project he was far more interested in. As a result, the album ended up being essentially a Horn solo record, albeit with plenty of outside contributions, starting with Yes bassist Chris Squire, and also counting keyboardist Simon Darlow and Anne Dudley, the producer and keyboardist with whom Horn would later form the experimental group Art of Noise. That project found success, especially in the mid-80s, with its own version of Henry Mancini's "Peter Gunn Theme"; the single "Kiss", an unexpected feature with Tom Jones; and in 1986 even a legendary guest appearance: that of Max Headroom, the famous character from the eponymous cult TV series, on the track "Paranoimia". Despite these populist flourishes, Horn and his colleagues' ambitions with this band were more artistic and lofty, as proven by their most recent album, 1999's "The Seduction Of Claude Debussy", based on the compositions of the great French Impressionist composer.

Back to the Buggles: the band's second and final album, Adventures In Modern Recording (1981), marks the end of their journey with results that are notable yet somehow elusive, to the point that many today don't even remember the group made two albums. The album's tracklist follows the musical formula of its predecessor, but comes across as somewhat less convincing, more prog and sprawling in sound (perhaps due to the influence of the Yes collaboration) and less incisive than the parodic, dystopian pop expressiveness that had distinguished the duo's first work. A duo which, in fact, ceased to be one when the record label took Downes's absence as a departure and suspended both their contracts. At that point, pretty much everyone was convinced the Buggles had broken up, and the album's and singles' poor commercial performance didn't help matters.

There are some worthwhile tracks, still centred on new technologies and plastic multimedia realities ("I Am A Camera", "On TV"), but also devoted to other subjects, as in "Rainbow Warrior", a pseudo-prog track that sounds like a cross between Rush of that era and Asia, telling the story of a kind of mythological warrior of light, and "Beatnik", a nostalgic piece evoking an era of great cultural and musical change, the 1960s (the sound, though filtered through early-80s production, recalls an average first-wave British Invasion band), by now long gone. Taken as a whole, the tracklist amounts to a renewed blend of old and new that sounds futuristic but, in its content, feels much more like the 70s than the 80s. Indeed, this second album could more accurately be described as neo-progressive, linking it to the decade's "pop" strand of the genre (Marillion, Genesis or Rush) rather than to synth-pop or electropop.

"I Am A Camera", also recorded by Yes under the title "Into The Lens", is a song whose piano-driven acoustic foundation is counterpointed by fleeting, rarefied synths, building a dystopian, distorted yet also deeply melancholic atmosphere, while Horn's voice in the refrain states exactly what the title suggests, as a statement on the inevitability of the rise of new technologies and multimedia. Particularly intriguing and pop-leaning is "On Tv", for which (not coincidentally) an official video was also made, showing Horn performing alongside various television sets broadcasting real-time images of himself, hinting at the influence of Nam June Paik's work on the new era of the music video. The track is perhaps the most commercial and electronic on the whole record: it's helped along by an almost "dance" rhythm and a very synthetic, barely acoustic arrangement. The song, like Genesis's "Turn It On Again" (1980) but in a more conceptual way, describes the new mythology shaped by the omnipresent, seductive pull of television content: “Abbiamo idoli, abbiamo sogni/ Tieni i tuoi occhi fissi sullo schermo/ Spremi la tua vita lì nel mezzo/ In Tv”.

It's clear Trevor Horn still had plenty to say, but by then few were left listening. By the end of the year, the Buggles fairy tale was officially over. No great loss for Horn, who discovered his true calling as a producer. Among the 80s works he oversaw, besides the two aforementioned Yes albums, are Abc's "The Lexicon Of Love", Malcolm McLaren's influential "Duck Rock", Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Welcome To The Pleasuredome", Grace Jones's "Slave To The Rhythm" and Paul McCartney's "Flowers In The Dirt". Also worth mentioning is the famous charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (though he only worked on a remix version), produced together with Midge Ure of Ultravox. In the years since, right up to today, Horn has produced a huge number of major artists, including Seal, Mike Oldfield, Bryan Adams, Faith Hill, and our own Italian stars Eros Ramazzotti and Renato Zero. Few also remember that it was him who, in 2002, produced the hit "All The Things She Said" for the much-talked-about Russian female duo t.A.T.u, handling both the arrangement and the English lyrics.

And Downes? He too went on to work as a producer, recording with many major artists and remaining a member of Asia for almost the entire span of their career right up to today, releasing a total of thirteen albums with the band. He also rejoined Yes in the 2010s, of whom he remains an official member and keyboardist to this day.

In short, the Buggles' star had just enough time to shine with the promise of a change that burned out quickly and that many barely remember, but in doing so it handed music history, pop and rock (let's say prog too) two exceptional talents: musicians, composers, producers and visionaries. Without the contribution of both, not only the music of the 80s but also today's music would sound entirely different.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google