Trevor Horn had spent four years working as a producer for other bands making no money at all when he finally decided to just do it himself instead and formed The Buggles with Geoff Downes. It took them more than three months to record “Video Killed The Radio Star”, a song lamenting the impact of technology on the media arts over the last decades leading up to it’s 1979 release. As the song was quite successful in their native UK and they couldn’t make time for an appearance on “Top Of The Pops” they decided to create a video instead. Now, at the time most music videos were just a few shots of the band playing, so the fact that they hired Australian director Russell Mulcahy (who would later direct Highlander) and had an actual plot made it stand apart.

Then in 1980 both members of The Buggles replaced personnel in the hugely popular progressive rock band Yes, and when touring with them in the US Horn did not quite understand why the kids in the crowd appeared to recognize him, especially given that The Buggles were not known at all in the states. He found out only later that it was because MTV, who went on air on August 1st, 1981, had chosen their video to be the first one to be emitted and with it’s elaborate content it was on heavy rotation. The fact that sales of The Buggles in the US went through the roof quite prominently soon after proofed that MTV, initially only shown on a select few cable networks, was reaching audiences very quickly and successfully.

As Horn’s wife agreed with his assessment that he was looking rather dumb in the video she convinced him to change back to the production side of music – luckily for us, as he was so good at it that he ended up with the nickname “The Man Who Invented The Eighties”.