When MTV launched on August 1, 1981, the first video it aired was a 1979 song about video killing radio. The Buggles weren't the only ones to describe the future before it arrived. The Who have sang about an Internet-like network, Kraftwerk about robot workers, Zapp about love on a computer screen and Killah Priest about phone calls tapped by the National Security Agency.
The Who, Relay (1972)
Pete Townshend wrote Relay for Lifehouse, an unfinished rock opera meant to follow the band's 1969 album Tommy. It came out as a non-album single in 1972, about two decades before the World Wide Web. Its lyrics describe information moving "twice as fast as on any freeway" and a network that takes in private lives: Every single dream / Is wrapped up in the scheme / They all get carried on the relay. It also warns: Don't believe your eyes, They're seeing only lies.
Townshend called Lifehouse "a sort of futuristic fantasy, a bit of science-fiction". In it, people wear "experience suits" linked to "a universal grid, a little like the modern Internet".
The Who during their 1966 German-Swiss tour
Pink Floyd, Welcome to the Machine (1975)
Roger Waters wrote the song as a criticism of the music industry and its corporate greed. Its lines Welcome to the machine / What did you dream? / It's all right, we told you what to dream have since been read as a picture of algorithms that shape taste, corporate control of data and constant surveillance.
Kraftwerk, The Robots (1978)
The German electronic band's single pictured a world in which humans depend on robot labour. It includes Russian lyrics that translate as I'm your servant, I'm your worker. When they played the song live, the band put remote-controlled robots on stage in their place. The theme has come back as companies announce large layoffs and replace staff with artificial intelligence.
The Clash, London Calling (1979)
In the 1970s, global warming was discussed mainly among scientists and was not widely understood by the public. That year, singer Joe Strummer's chorus on the band's single ran: The ice age is comin', the sun's zoomin' in / Meltdown expected, the wheat is growin' thin / Engines stop runnin', but I have no fear / 'Cause London is drownin' and I live by the river. Climate change has become a larger global issue in the decades since.
The Buggles, Video Killed the Radio Star (1979)
The pop group's single looked ahead to music videos overtaking radio: "Pictures came and broke your heart / Put the blame on VCR." MTV launched two years later, on August 1, 1981, and the first video it aired was Video Killed the Radio Star. MTV went on to become the industry's dominant force. It was later overtaken itself by platforms such as YouTube and TikTok.
Talking Heads, Life During Wartime (1979)
In a 1979 interview, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne predicted food shortages, gas crises and political disinformation. He also said computers would be "the size of wrist watches" and described a "central television bank" that would connect to home computers. Life During Wartime, the lead single from the album Fear of Music, is narrated by a revolutionary living in a dystopian future. It includes the lines: We got computers, we're tapping phone lines / I know that that ain't allowed. The song also deals with gun violence and starvation, set to a dance beat.
Psychedelic rock group Pink Floyd
Styx, Mr. Roboto (1983)
Frontman Dennis DeYoung said the song, from the band's 11th album Kilroy Was Here, was inspired by a documentary about robots replacing workers in car factories. "I looked at that and I went, 'Oh my God, yeah! That's what can happen with technology. Humans? Who needs 'em," he recalled. Over a synthesiser-heavy arrangement, the song imagines a world where machines replace people. The same theme now comes up in discussions of artificial intelligence, robotics and automation.
Zapp, Computer Love (1986)
The funk group released Computer Love at a time when meeting a partner through a computer was not a widely held idea. The opening verse runs: I've been searching for someone / Who can share that special love with me / And your eyes have that glow / Could it be your face I see on my computer screen. Another passage reads: Need a special girl / To share in my computer world / I no longer need a strategy / Thanks to modern technology. Dating is now dominated by apps and websites including Tinder, Bumble, Hinge and Match.
Radiohead, Fitter Happier (1997)
Fitter Happier appears on OK Computer, an album about anxiety, consumerism and social alienation. A computerised voice reads out a checklist for living: Fitter, happier, more productive / Comfortable / Not drinking too much / Regular exercise at the gym. In June 2016, BBC News reported that "For today's late adolescents and twenty-somethings, hedonism has given way to hard work". A term was coined for the generation: the New Young Fogeys.
Killah Priest, Information (1998)
Killah Priest, a rapper associated with the Wu-Tang Clan, recorded Information for his debut album Heavy Mental. It includes the lines: Our telephone conversations will be automatically wire tapped / And transcripted by the National Security Agency. That was three years before the 2001 Patriot Act, which gave the legal basis for the telephone metadata programme that Edward Snowden exposed in 2013.
And there’s more
Other songs have been linked to later events. On Up From the Skies (1967), Jimi Hendrix sang as an alien coming back to an Earth that carries "the smell of a world that has burned". On Big Yellow Taxi (1970), Joni Mitchell sang about paradise being paved to put up a parking lot. Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity (1996) described a future "governed by this love we have / For useless twisting of our new technology". In 2007, The Game's Hard Times, featuring Lil Wayne, named Barack Obama as the man to catch Osama bin Laden. Obama won the presidency the following year, and bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in May 2011.