Radar Love

"Radar Love"
Song

"Radar Love"
Song

"Radar Love" was a hit by the Dutch rock band Golden Earring. The song is considered by many to be among the "greatest driving songs ever" according to BBC's Top Gear and About.com due to its lyrics about driving all night, its up-tempo beat, and its catchy sing-along chorus. The song reached #13 in the US.

Original version

Dutch and German fans knew Golden Earring (and their early incarnation The Golden Earrings) as a second-tier pop/psychedelic group dating back to the mid-1960s, but for most listeners in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada, the first exposure to the group came in 1973 with the crashing 14-note guitar-and-cymbals introduction to "Radar Love" on the local top-40 radio station. "Radar Love" is that rarity of the early '70s: a song that works both as an extended, "progressive" album track and as a hit single. Golden Earring's 1973 US album Moontan, itself a reworking of an earlier European release, was targeted at the then-expanding FM progressive rock radio audience and seemed an unlikely source for a breakout hit single: five extended jams averaging over eight minutes per song. An unknown engineer took "Radar Love", which at a relatively compact six-and-a-half minutes was already the tightest of the album cuts, excised the instrumental solos (save for a drum-and-synth break which became the focal point of the short version) and tightened the opening and closing, creating a single half the length of the original jam. Lyrically, "Radar Love" is a tale of late-night driving and ESP; the real attraction is the non-stop parade of musical invention, from the aforementioned intro and drum solo to the twin guitar responses to each vocal line in the last verse to the cascading synthesizers that crash the tune to a close. Golden Earring wouldn't have another stateside hit until 1982, with the MTV-ready "Twilight Zone", but "Radar Love" remains a rock radio staple and their defining moment. The song has been covered occasionally over the decades, including versions by White Lion, U2, R.E.M., Blue Man Group, Def Leppard, James Last, Nine Pound Hammer, Santana and Ministry.

White Lion version

The band White Lion recorded a cover of this song for their album Big Game. It was included as a playable song in 2007's Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s.

Notable Song Appearances

The song has been used in many films and television programs. Among them:

• 1993: "Radar Love" features prominently near the beginning of the film Wayne's World 2.
• 1995-1998: Portions of the song were used in Téa Leoni's sitcom The Naked Truth as the theme song.
• In two episodes of The Simpsons:
  • 1996: "Bart on the Road", where it is on the radio during the road trip.
  • 2002: "Papa's Got a Brand New Badge", where Fat Tony requests the song on the radio, and Homer begins singing along (although he more or less makes up his own lyrics)
• 1999: In the film Detroit Rock City when Trip throws a slice of pizza out the passenger side window of a moving Volvo and onto the windshield of a car full of "Stellas" and "Guidos," causing a confrontation, "Radar Love" plays.
  • Also briefly featured in the 1999 film Pushing Tin.
• 2000: In the Strangers with Candy episode "Hit and Run".
• 2007: The song was featured heavily in the Reaper episode "Love, Bullets & Blacktop".

The song has also been used in at least one video game. It is featured as one of the background music tracks in the Sega Genesis version of the video game Rock N' Roll Racing. However, the song was omitted from the SNES and GameBoy Advance ports of the game.

Other appearances:

• 2004 The song title was used as the name of an episode in the popular web series Red vs. Blue.
• In a video of a training exercise with the Oregon Air National Guard.
• As a part of the ambient soundtrack around Rita - Queen of Speed at Alton Towers.
• As of July 2008, appears as the sound track to an on-line Jaguar promotion
• As part of the setlist in the PlayStation 2 exclusive Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's.

References within the song

Besides being heavily referenced in popular culture, Radar Love's lyrics themselves reference another pop culture icon. Brenda Lee's song "Comin' On Strong" is the likely source for that phrase's inclusion in the lyrics.

Greatest Driving Song

"Radar Love" was voted as the 2nd greatest driving song on the 6th series of Top Gear, losing out to Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now". By contrast, on the About.com web site, it is ranked as #1 on a list of top 10 driving songs.

External links

• Radar-Love.net shows a list which contains more than 300 cover versions of "Radar Love" U2, R.E.M., Blue Man Group, James Last, Bryan Adams, Def Leppard, White Lion, Crowded House and many others