“Spirit of the Radio” by Rush

Rush named "The Spirit of Radio" after a slogan used by CFNY-FM, the station out of Brampton, Ontario, and put it on their 1980 album Permanent Waves. Alex Lifeson wanted the opening riff to feel like static, electric radio waves ricocheting over a sequenced pattern underneath, and that intro sits in an E mixolydian mode before the rest of the song settles into plain E major, circling back to the riff along the way.

Near the end the band swerves into reggae, an idea they would keep chasing across their next three records, Moving Pictures, Signals and Grace Under Pressure. It also mattered to their rise: it gave Rush their first top-30 single in Canada and reached number 51 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.