You probably heard Al Stewart’s “Song on the Radio” on the radio a lot back in the day. Released in January of 1979, today’s classic song of the day peaked at #29 on the Billboard Hot 100, #27 on the Cash Box Top 100, and #10 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart.
“Song on the Radio” was the next-to-last track on side two of Mr. Stewart’s 1978 album, Time Passages. That album also included the song “Time Passages,” Mr. Stewart’s highest-charting single and the follow-up to the classic “Year of the Cat.”
Al Stewart wrote “Song on the Radio” as a bit of a lark. After the success of “Year of the Cat,” his record label wanted more of the same, even though his own personal tastes were gravitating to historical songs, of which there were a few on the Time Passages album. In Al’s own words:
“ …the record company asked for a mid-tempo ballad with a saxophone on it, and I was kind of making fun of Arista Records. They wanted a song that could be played on the radio, and very tongue-in-cheek I wrote a song called ‘Song on the Radio.’ I thought they’d be smart enough to see I was actually joking, but of course they didn’t, and they put it out as a single and it made the Top 30, and the joke was on me because I screwed up a preposition.”
The preposition with which he ended a phrase came at the beginning of the first verse:
I was making my way through the wasteland
The road into town passes through
He also used the word “through” twice in the same sentence, which he also regrets. Mr. Stewart is too skilled and literate a wordsmith to let that sort of thing pass by without comment.
I’m a huge Al Stewart fan; I personally rank his Year of the Cat album as one of my top five favorite albums and the song “Year of the Cat” as one of my top five favorite songs, period. I especially love his history-based writing, in particular his 1995 album, Between the Wars, which is all about that seemingly peaceful but really eventful period between the first and second world wars. It’s brilliant.
Speaking of brilliant, here’s today’s daily bonus track of the day, the B-side of the “Song on the Radio” single and the last track on side one of the Time Passages album. The song is “A Man for All Seasons” and, like the 1966 movie of the same name, it’s about Sir Thomas More and Henry Plantagenet, AKA King Henry II of England. It’s a great song and a neat little history lesson, in case you needed one.
