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Radioactivity (song)

"Radioactivity"
Kraftwerk-Radio-Activity-183495.jpg
Single by Kraftwerk
from the album Radio-Activity
B-side "Antenna"
Released May 1976 (1976-05)
Format 7-inch single
Recorded Kling Klang Studio
Genre
Length 3:18 (radio edit)
6:42 (album version)
Label
Writer(s)
Producer(s)
  • Ralf Hütter
  • Florian Schneider
Kraftwerk chronology
"Autobahn"
(1975)
"Radioactivity"
(1976)
"Trans-Europe Express"
(1977)
"Radioactivity"
Single by Kraftwerk
from the album The Mix
Released October 1991 (1991-10)
Format
Genre Synthpop
Label
Writer(s)
Producer(s)
  • Ralf Hütter
  • Florian Schneider
Kraftwerk chronology
"The robots (1991)"
(1991)
"Radioactivity (1991)"
(1991)
"Expo 2000"
(1999)
"Radioactivity"
Fatboy Slim Radioactivity.jpg
Single by Fatboy Slim
from the album Late Night Tales: Fatboy Slim
B-side "Everything Is Everything"
Released October 8, 2007 (2007-10-08)
Format 7-inch single
Length 3:37
Label LateNightTales
Writer(s)
Producer(s)
Fatboy Slim singles chronology
"Champion Sound"
(2006)
"Radioactivity"
(2007)
"Please Don't"
(2010)

"Radioactivity" (German: "Radioaktivität") is a song by the German electronic music band Kraftwerk, featuring Emil Schult. It was released in May 1976 as the lead and only single from their fifth studio album, Radio-Activity (1975).

The song was a commercial success in France, but was not as successful in other countries as Kraftwerk's previous hit single "Autobahn".

The original recording features an insistent Minimoog bass line (playing eighth notes), with chords played on the distinctive "choir" disc of the Vako Orchestron. Morse code signals spelling out "R-A-D-I-O-A-C-T-I-V-I-T-Y" are also present, near the beginning of the track and again near the end. The second time it is followed by "I-S I-N T-H-E A-I-R F-O-R Y-O-U A-N-D M-E".

Lyrically, the 1975 version of the song plays upon the meaning of its title, with the line "Discovered by Madame Curie (In fact, Natural radioactivity was discovered by Henri Becquerel (and independently by Silvanus Thompson); induced radioactivity by Irène Joliot-Curie, Marie Curie's daughter. Curie coined the term "radioactivity").

The song was re-recorded as a radically different version for The Mix album in 1991 and was issued as a single in an edited form with remixes by François Kevorkian and William Orbit. While the original does not offer a value judgement on the safety of radioactivity, the 1991 version drops all references to radio and incorporates additional lyrics with a pointed anti-nuclear theme, remaking the central lyrical hook as "stop radioactivity" and also referring to "contaminated population" and mentioning by name Chernobyl, Harrisburg (Three Mile Island), Sellafield and Hiroshima.


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