“Airwaves” by Thomas Dolby

Thomas Dolby wrote and produced "Airwaves" himself, and it was the second single pulled from his debut album, The Golden Age of Wireless, issued on Venice in Peril/EMI in January 1982. It was hardly brand new: a demo had already surfaced in November 1980 on From Brussels with Love, a compilation from the Belgian label Les Disques du Crépuscule. The finished take was cut at Tapestry Studios in London in September 1981.

Dolby plays the synthesizers and piano and sings lead, with Kevin Armstrong on guitar, Mark Heyward-Chaplin on bass and Justin Hildreth on drums. He later sketched the world behind it: post-apocalyptic, the subways too risky to walk, everything electrified, the air itself unsafe, and a ham radio movement working underground. The underdogs, the resistance, he said, were his tribe.

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