Its terrace-anthem chorus was accompanied by a hooky double handclap, but unusually for a Queen track there was little guitar from Brian May beyond a few licks towards the end. It throbbed with an electronic pulse that was at odds with its nostalgic longing for a time when radio was king. The finished track was a masterpiece of mid-80s pop-rock, simultaneously a love letter to radio and a call for it to pull up its metaphorical trousers. Hence a verse that celebrated radio as an ‘old friend’, warning that ' We might miss you, when we grow tired of all this visual'. Realising that no radio station would play a song called Radio Ca Ca, the band retitled it Radio Ga Ga, although Taylor later insisted the song’s original title remained intact in its lyrics: “If you listen closely, that’s what we’re singing: ‘ Radio ca ca.’”įor much the same reason, the band’s new US label, Capitol, insisted they temper the downbeat angle of lines such as ‘ You’ve had your time, You’ve had your power’. “But I felt there were some construction elements that were wrong. “Roger had the ideas all together,” said Mercury, who worked on the song with assistance from session keyboard player Fred Mandel. The singer took his bandmate up on his offer. Before he went he told Mercury to “do what you want” with the song. Fortuitously, Taylor decided to take a break from the sessions to go on holiday. “I think Roger was thinking about it as just another track, but I instantly felt there was something in there – a really good, strong, saleable commodity” he later said.
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