Last night, I was listening to some music on Youtube, and stumbled upon a summary of all the things Giorgio Moroder made in the ’80s, which turns out to be probably a third of the greatest hits from the period, and I knew most of them from before, but now I stumbled upon one I didn’t know about:

The first shock was that Moroder actually did a song with Mercury – it’s not like Queen had a lack of creative talent. The second shock is that only Mercury was credited, although I was sure I can hear Brian May’s guitar there. Also, why isn’t this song more widely known, since it’s great, and… wait a minute, why does it have something that I recognise as iconic Queen sound? Because it sounds exactly like Radio Ga Ga, that’s why. What’s going on there?

So I looked it up this morning, and it seems to be all about contract obligations and copyright. Apparently, Giorgio Moroder was doing the soundtrack for some kind of a 1980s remake of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”, and likely thought that “Queen” sound would go great with that, considering what they did with “Flash Gordon” a few years earlier, but that’s just my guesswork. In any case, the project was contracted by CBS, and “Queen” had a contract with EMI, so they couldn’t be credited for it, nor perform it on stage, so Mercury was credited and Moroder’s pivotal role was historically all but forgotten, as is the case with lots of his stuff, since he didn’t care much about putting himself out there.

So, since Mercury got permission to use clips from “Metropolis” for his videos, the “Queen”, still under impression from Moroder’s synth sound, went out and made “Radio Ga Ga”, with Metropolis footage and all:

So, let’s use this opportunity to shower praise on Giovanni Giorgio Moroder, the man who invented the sound of the 1980s.