The Media Song

I was listening to the radio, on a drive home, and the quintessential 80’s beat accompanied the falsetto vocals of A-ah’s Morten Harket. The song - ‘The sun always shines on TV’. I have been relatively indifferent to this song over the years, but for some reason, its title seemed to infuse some intrigue. What does it really mean? This unconventional phrasing made me further hunt high and low of how media terms such as TV, radio, newspapers and the like, have been used in song and the emotions and associations that often accompany them.

Freddie Mercury’s epic energised double clap of Radio Gaga often overpowers the thought behind the song. Probably written at the time when visual technology was invading the radio space -

We watch the shows, we watch the stars

On videos for hours and hours

We hardly need to use our ears

How music changes through the years

Let’s hope you never leave old friend

Like all good things on you we depend

So stick around ’cause we might miss you

When we grow tired of all this visual

You had your time, you had the power

You’ve yet to have your finest hour

The essence, similar yet, more hopeful than the song by Buggles on the future of radio that tends to conclude the video killed the radio star.

In my mind and in my car

We can’t rewind we’ve gone too far

Video killed the radio star

Interesting though, is the role radio appeared to play in people’s lives. It was an old friend that would sing and tell you stories of the day. Often at night. It also was soaked with the warmth of nostalgia.

I’d sit alone and watch your light

My only friend through teenage nights

And everything I had to know

I heard it on my radio

And as The Carpenters made us reminisce-

When I was young, I’d listen to the radio

Waiting for my favourite songs

When they played I’d sing along, it made me smile

TV too, though in conflict with radio, overtime did also seem to find its function as an escape - a place you would transport yourself into. As Pal Waaktaar, said of the time when he and Furuholmen, guitarist and keyboardist respectively of A-ha, were in a hotel watching tv and the program announcer said- “it’s a rainy day, but as always, the sun always shines on TV.” It seems to imply the power of television and the way television presents itself. The feeling of escape that Radio and TV presented was also felt in neon signs in the song Downtown by Petula Clark-

When you’re alone, and life is making you lonely

You can always go Downtown

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city

Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty

However, TV did not escape materialism that Bruce Springsteen said of ’57 Channels (and nothing on) or what Mark Knopfler recited of the MTV star he heard from the store delivery man.

Newspapers, on the other hand, tended to be more factual and were honest to what they were supposed to bring i.e. News!. -‘Extra! Extra! Read all about it!’ The WHO announced.

Though, there always appeared a sense of melancholy and sadness that surrounded it- Don Mclean’s softly revealed the crash of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper in ‘American Pie!’

But February made me shiver

With every paper I’d deliver

Bad News on the doorstep

I couldn’t take one more step

  Or then The Beatles-

I read the news today, oh boy

About a lucky man who made the grade

And though the news was rather sad…

The association of park benches and covered faces also add to the solitary nature of the medium. Magazines, though have a more spirited association. Lyrics such as ‘sweet seduction in a magazine’ or ‘high gloss on a magazine’ or then ‘I want to be on the cover of a magazine.’It almost shares the relationship as the wealthy glamorous cousin of the newspaper just as TV did of the radio.

Social Media though, is still trying to find its space in authenticity. Fake news and polarisation have navigated itself into a place it needs to evolve from. As Pet Shop Boys in their recent song suggest- 

When you care about the issues of the day

And check your facts on Wikipedia

You can and get into an argument right away

If you’re on social media

The gravitas of the medium is still to be earned in song as some lyrics indicate: 

Cheap thrills, social media thrills, used as a drug. 

Now they on social media talking greasy.

Social media at some level may be going through its growth cycle just as TV did against the radio. The sun may eventually shine on social in time to come.

The nostalgia of radio; the sadness of newspapers; the sunshine of television; the glamour of the magazine; the positivity of neon lights; the greasiness of social media, do all sing their tune in The Media Song.