“Video Killed the Radio Star” was inspired from the J.G. Ballard short “The Sound-Sweep.” It was written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley, and was the first track recorded for The Age of Plastic. The song went on to be a huge worldwide hit, peaking at the number one spot in several territories.

A little-known fact is that the song was originally recorded by Woolley’s band Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club. This version had slightly different lyrics, and lacked the characteristic “oh-a oh-a” hook.

A spiritual successor to the movie Singin' in the Rain, which was about how the rise of what were known as “talking pictures” wrecked the careers of those talented silent film actors whose voices wouldn’t translate to film. The song is about those musicians whose careers were destroyed because they would not translate visually to television. Adequate to this theme, the music video for the song was famously the first aired on MTV, at 12:01AM on August 1st, 1981.