Radio Radio by Elvis Costello

Few rockers have ever given the middle finger to the music biz as effectively as Elvis Costello did in “Radio Radio,” where he vows to bite the hand that feeds him and make the radio types wish they’d never seen him.

To nobody’s surprise, this song didn’t get a lot of airplay…but it is one of the definitive songs of Costello’s “angry young man” era. Originally a non-album single in the UK, “Radio Radio” was added to the US version of his second album This Year’s Model.

Costello made TV history with this song twice: First he abruptly stopped an on-camera performance on Saturday Night Live, cutting off “Less Than Zero” (which dealt with an English political scandal) and charging into “Radio Radio” instead, much to the producers’ displeasure. He came back years later and repeated the same trick with the Beastie Boys backing him up—this time with the show’s blessing.

The producer on all early Costello tracks including “Radio Radio” was Nick Lowe, a cult-hero songwriter in his own right.

This is a punk rock song so it moves fast! Both guitar and drums have a moderately difficult song with a few 16th note sections. On drums those come toward the end, so don’t run out of breath too soon. The melody is fairly simple but as you’d expect with a Costello song, there are a lot of lyrics to spit out.

Still enjoying a major career. Still not getting much airplay.