Upon its release, the entire human race was beginning perhaps its most radical evolution yet, as both traditional radio and music video was rapidly replaced by digital downloads and satellite music, both more more far reaching than anything before.
“Radio Nowhere,” the first track on 2007’s Magic and one of the Boss’ best true rockers in the latter half of his career, can be seen as part of a relatively rich tradition of songs lamenting changes to the music industry. Think Queen’s “Radio Gaga,” The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” Rush’s “Spirit of the Radio,” and Tom Petty’s “The Last DJ.” On the surface, the speaker laments the decline of traditional radio as musicians before Springsteen had been doing for decades, though the pressures facing the industry in 2007 were markedly different, as is the overall impact of the song. In 1979 (The Buggles), 1980 (Rush), and 1984 (Queen), the pop music scene was rapidly being upended by the rise of MTV and the transition of music from a purely auditory medium to a visual one, placing different demands on artists to succeed in this altered space as audiences valued more than the catchiness of the tune. The vanguards of these new trends, like Duran Duran, understood from the very beginning that image was more important than ever before, and even for their debut album, negotiated a wardrobe budget. Springsteen, of course, began his career in an earlier era, and yet managed to parlay a large cult-like following in rock music circles into international superstardom on MTV with seven top ten singles, many with accompanying videos, from Born in the USA released in 1984. Two decades later, however, the industry – and the entire human race, though we might not have known it at the time – was beginning perhaps its most dramatic evolution yet, as both traditional radio and music video was rapidly being replaced by digital downloads and satellite music. This represented a completely different kind of paradigm shift, both more radical and more far reaching for the human condition. Through this lens, the transition to music videos can be seen as an extension and an expansion of radio. Similar to the way silent movies were replaced by talkies, everyone in 1974 listened to the same radio stations in their area while everyone in 1984 still watched the same MTV. The content in both cases was curated, tailored to the tastes of the DJ and the VJ as they understood their audience – of course, with a healthy dose of corporate concerns – and listeners were part of a community of like minded individuals, gathered both separately and together around the radio or the TV.
The internet, however, and satellite to some extent, were fundamentally different with much broader repercussions. Across both mediums, the listener became the curator, tailoring their own experience independent of anyone else and ultimately fracturing any sense of community, leading to a world where we literally see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear, and can refuse to be exposed to anything different. In this context, the speaker begins his lament:
I was tryin’ to find my way home
But all I heard was a drone
Bouncing off a satellite
Crushin’ the last lone American night
From the opening verse, it’s obvious that Springsteen and the speaker have more on their minds than mere radio, as important as that may be especially to a rockstar who’s made millions upon millions thanks to the airwaves. Though the word itself hasn’t appeared yet, radio is imagined in this framing as the connection that binds us together and without it, the speaker is lost, unable to find his way home. This is radio as a personal and cultural guiding light, a metaphor for the North Star, providing a clear direction in the night. Without it, the speaker finds himself pushed in different directions, confronted by too many meaningless signals. Rather than guiding him straight and true, the new, more technologically advanced incarnation simply bounces around in an empty void between satellites, “Crushin’ the last lone American night.” There is a sense of both isolation and loneliness, reinforced by the simple chorus:
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
The second verse compounds the first, adding more detail about the lack of connection in what at the time, was only an emerging internet era. The speaker is stuck, “spinnin’ round a dead dial, Just another lost number in a file.” Whatever connection he used to have is gone, but he cannot stop reaching for the metaphorical dial, even knowing nothing is there, only bleak emptiness. Of course, the idea that Americans have become mere numbers on some corporate and government ledger was far from new even in 2007. The rise of bureaucratic behemoths that reduce everything to profit margins began more than a century and half earlier in the Gilded Age, but at least from the speaker’s perspective, critical cultural institutions like radio offered the veneer of an interpersonal connection, the sense that we are not alone in this world. As Tom Petty put it, the suits might well be calling the shots behind the scenes, choosing what to play and when to play it, but the listener still had the reliable DJ and was part of the overall community of like-minded individuals, connected through space and time by the shared experience of the music. The internet, however, quite literally reduces people to numbers, both separating them and erasing their humanity. Our presence on machines is entirely as an ever expanding string of ones and zeros, completely meaningless without the right computer to decode the data. The result, in the speaker’s phrasing, is to be trapped “Dancin’ down a dark hole,” as if one can literally be pulled into these devices, never to escape, “Just searching for a world with some soul.”
From there, the speaker repeats the chorus with the lonely addition of another, oddly dangling “Is there anybody alive out there?” But then he shifts into stating what he really wants, delivered in the form of one of those pounding rhythmic breaks Springsteen is famous for, this time both literally and figuratively, as if repeating something over and over again might make it so:
I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm
Previously, the song had been driven primarily by guitar, a sort of rolling, somewhat mournful riff that echoes driving down a lonely highway. Springsteen’s voice has also been restrained, but suddenly everything breaks out at once in signature style, driving home what’s missing from the speaker’s life and expanding the overall theme of the song. The extended break continues to address this even more directly, as the speaker calls out what this rhythm means to him, again both literally and figuratively:
I want a thousand guitars
I want pounding drums
I want a million different voices speaking in tongues
The final line subtly reinforces the isolation and lack of connection plaguing the speaker and through him, us. He doesn’t merely want to hear music or rhythm. He wants to be surrounded, carried away, lifted up by a “thousand guitars” and a “million voices,” rejoining the community he and we lost, but still, as the chorus repeats again, “This is radio nowhere,” there might not be “anyone alive out there,” leaving us all alone whatever we want. The phrase “radio nowhere” is, of course, an interesting choice of words on its own. Radio isn’t the type of thing we normally associate with somewhere. If you’re within range of the station, it’s everywhere. As Rush described it twenty seven years earlier, “Invisible airwaves crackle with life, Bright antennas bristle with the energy, Emotional feedback on a timeless wavelength Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free.” The speaker’s use of “radio nowhere” both captures the absence and also suggests a desolation, connecting the end of the radio era with the loneliness of the speaker, as we all have become immersed in the private world of our ever expanding variety of devices. Radio is nowhere in that world, and so is he. The most important question, as stated previously, remains “is there anybody alive out there?” The answer, at least as the final verse unfolds, isn’t exactly positive. The speaker is “driving through the misty rain, searchin’ for a mystery train,” still alone on the road as he was at the start of the song. There is, however, at least a hint of a happy ending, something positive amongst all this dislocation, as he reveals that, perhaps one person can make things better. “Boppin’ through the wild blue,” is definitely a more positive spin on drones mindlessly bouncing off of satellites, and now his goal is more defined, “Tryin’ to make a connection with you.” The status of this connection – indeed all connections in general – remains unclear in this world of nowhere as the chorus repeats one final time, and the song winds down with “I just want to feel some rhythm,” once again, but this time there’s a subtle shift.
On the third repeat, “some” rhythm becomes “your” rhythm, reducing the connection to two souls that might – just might be able to find each other – and unleash the equivalent of a thousand guitars, a million different voices speaking in tongues. For a song that looks to the future – and clearly the rise of social media has only exacerbated the feeling of dislocation over the past 17 years since its release, lending a certain prescience to an otherwise direct narrative – Springsteen also cleverly references his own past. “Is there anybody alive out there?” had long been a staple question at his live shows, asking the crowd and receiving the requisite booming response, but turned into a lyric about a lonely man lost on the highway, it takes on new meaning, a cry for help rather than affirmation of the joy of the live experience. There are also obvious lyrical parallels to an unreleased near-punk song, “Living on the Edge of the World,” recorded in 1979, that almost magically was transformed into a mournful acoustic track, “Open All Night,” released on 1982’s Nebraska. In “Living on the Edge of the World,” the speaker is also driving alone at night, unable to connect with is lover, relying on “relay towers” to lead him there:
I’m living on the edge of the world
Tryin’ to get my girl on the line
Livin’ on the edge of the world
But I think it’s just a waste of my time
Some jerk keeps breaking my connection, girl
‘Cause I’m living on the edge of the world
Radio, radio, hear my tale of heartbreak
New Jersey in the morning like a lunar landscape
In both songs, the speaker beseeches the DJ to “deliver him from nowhere,” “Your eyes get itchy in the wee wee hours, sun’s just a red ball risin’ over them refinery towers, Radio’s jammed up with gospel stations lost souls callin’ long distance salvation, Hey, mister deejay, woncha hear my last prayer hey, ho, rock’n’roll, deliver me from nowhere.” If you view these tracks as a progression of sorts, the power of radio to deliver one from nowhere was at least possible in 1979 and 1982, but by 2007, radio itself had become nowhere and the lost and lonely might never find their way home again.
RADIO NOWHERE
I was tryin’ to find my way home
But all I heard was a drone
Bouncing off a satellite
Crushin’ the last lone American night
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
I was spinnin’ ’round a dead dial
Just another lost number in a file
Dancin’ down a dark hole
Just searchin’ for a world with some soul
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
Is there anybody alive out there?
I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm
I want a thousand guitars
I want pounding drums
I want a million different voices speaking in tongues
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
Is there anybody alive out there?
I was driving through the misty rain
Yeah searchin’ for a mystery train
Boppin’ through the wild blue
Tryin’ to make a connection with you
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
Is there anybody alive out there?
I just want to feel some rhythm
I just want to feel some rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 