"The Spirit of Radio" is a song by Canadian rock band Rush, released from their 1980 album Permanent Waves. The song's name was inspired by Toronto-based radio station CFNY-FM's slogan. It was significant in the growing popularity of the band, becoming their first top 30 single in Canada and reaching number 51 on the US Billboard Hot 100. It remains one of their best-known songs and was a concert staple. Background The introduction of the song was composed in a mixolydian mode scale built on E; most of the rest, barring repetitions of the introductory guitar riff, is in conventional E major. Guitarist Alex Lifeson explained the song's opening riff as "I just wanted to give it something that gave it a sense of static – radio waves bouncing around, very electric. We had that sequence going underneath, and it was just really to try and get something that was sitting on top of it, that gave it that movement." "The Spirit of Radio" features the band experimenting with a reggae style in its closing section. Reggae would be explored further on the band's next three records, Moving Pictures, Signals, and Grace Under Pressure. The group had experimented with reggae-influenced riffs in the studio and had come up with a reggae introduction to "Working Man" on their tours, so they decided to incorporate a passage into "The Spirit of Radio", and as Lifeson said, "to make us smile and have a little fun". Lyrically, the song is a lament on the change of FM radio from free-form to commercial formats during the late 1970s. The Toronto-based station CFNY-FM—which had not abandoned free-form programming—is cited as an inspiration for the song. The reggae finale also has lyrics inspired by the song "The Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel. Single release Rush had grazed the UK Top 40 two years earlier with "Closer to the Heart", but when "The Spirit of Radio" was issued as a single in March 1980, it reached number 13 on the UK Singles Chart. It remains their biggest UK hit to date (the 7" single was a 3:00 edited version which has not appeared on CD, as of 2011). In the US, the single peaked at number 51 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1980 and number 22 in Canada, and in 1998 a live version of the song reached number 27 on the Mainstream Rock