Rush have shared a new “conceptual music video” for the band’s Permanent Waves standout “The Spirit of Radio.”
The animated video serves as both a tribute to the FM radio format — the song was inspired by Toronto’s CFNY-FM, whose slogan was “the spirit of radio — as well as the band’s legacy; the spread of the FM signal is juxtaposed alongside Rush’s own rise in the video.
The new video for “The Spirit of Radio,” one of Rush’s most essential songs, also serves as a tribute to the band’s late drummer Neil Peart, who died in January following a brain cancer battle.
”The Spirit of Radio’ could be called ‘The Spirit of Music,’” Peart said in 1980. “That particular song was written about a radio station that is a paragon; it’s called CFNY-FM and it’s in Toronto. And they are still what FM radio was 15 years ago. So I listen to it constantly when I’m home, and it represents something, maybe the precious last stronghold of something.”
Rush recently marked the 40th anniversary of Permanent Waves with a new reissue featuring previously unreleased live material from 1980.
