"Radio Waves" is the opening track from Roger Waters' second solo studio album, Radio K.A.O.S. It was chosen as the lead single for the album, released worldwide in May 1987.
"Radio Waves" introduces the main character, Billy, a disabled man who finds a way to talk and become friends with a radio DJ. Billy is gifted and has the miracle of hearing and interpreting radio waves in his head. He explores a cordless phone which was hidden in his wheelchair by his brother Benny, after destroying and robbing a store. Recognising its similarity to a radio, he experiments with the phone and is able to access computers and speech synthesizers, he learns to speak through them. He calls a radio station in L.A. named Radio KAOS, a completely fictitious radio station based in Los Angeles and tells them of his abilities and his life story throughout the album.
Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum longer than infrared light. Radio waves have frequencies from 300 GHz to as low as 3 kHz, and corresponding wavelengths ranging from 1 millimeter (0.039 in) to 100 kilometers (62 mi). Like all other electromagnetic waves, they travel at the speed of light. Naturally occurring radio waves are made by lightning, or by astronomical objects. Artificially generated radio waves are used for fixed and mobile radio communication, broadcasting, radar and other navigation systems, communications satellites, computer networks and innumerable other applications. Radio waves are generated by radio transmitters and received by radio receivers. Different frequencies of radio waves have different propagation characteristics in the Earth's atmosphere; long waves can diffract around obstacles like mountains and follow the contour of the earth (ground waves), shorter waves can reflect off the ionosphere and return to earth beyond the horizon (skywaves), while much shorter wavelengths bend or diffract very little and travel on a line of sight, so their propagation distances are limited to the visual horizon.
Jet Black & Jealous is an album by American country music band Eli Young Band. It was released on September 16, 2008 by Universal South. The album's first single, "When It Rains", peaked at #34 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. A second single, "Always the Love Songs", was released to country radio in September 2008, and debuted at #60 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, ultimately peaking at #11. Originally written by New Orleans-born songwriter Paul Sanchez, the song "Jet Black & Jealous" was re-written for the Eli Young Band by Scooter Carusoe.
"When It Rains" was the album's first single, spending more than thirty weeks on the charts and peaking at #34 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. After it came "Always the Love Songs," which became the band's first Top 20 hit with a peak of #11. The album's third and fourth singles, "Radio Waves" and "Guinevere," peaked at #35 and #45, respectively.
Andrew Leahey of Allmusic gave the album three-and-a-half stars out of five, saying that the "songs borrow from rock and pop without ever fully entering either camp."
Radio Waves may refer to: