Dolby promoted himself as a kind of mad scientist, an egghead that had successfully harnessed the power of synthesizers and samplers, using them to make catchy pop and electro-funk. Before he launched his solo career, Dolby had already worked as a studio musician, technician, and songwriter. After starting out as a teenaged live sound man, mixing The Fall, The Members and others using a PA he built himself, he formed the arty post-punk band Camera Club (also known as Bruce Woolley & the Camera Club) with Bruce Woolley, Geoff Downes, Trevor Horn and Matthew Seligman. Within a year, he had left the group and joined Lene Lovich’s backing band and gave her his song "New Toy", which became a British hit in 1981. That same year, he released his first solo single, "Urges", on the English independent label Armageddon. By the autumn, he had signed with Parlophone and released "Europa and the Pirate Twins", which nearly cracked the UK Top 40.
Dolby started playing synthesizer on sessions for other artists in 1982. That year, he played keyboards on Def Leppard’s Pyromania and Joan Armatrading’s Walk Under Ladders. His most distinctive session credit is that keyboard line after the chorus on Foreigner’s "Waiting for a Girl Like You". In that eventful summer, Dolby also collaborating with New York rappers Whodini to create "Magic’s Wand" – a pivotal early hip hop track (the first rap single to shift 1 million copies), and it also single-handedly started the new jack swing movement.
Even with all of these achievements, 1982 was most noteworthy for the release of Dolby’s first solo album, The Golden Age of Wireless, in the summer of 1982, the landmark album reaching number 13. "Windpower", the first single from the record, became his first Top 40 UK hit in the late summer. Other cuts from the album include "The Airwaves", and "One of Our Submarines", a meditation on the futility of empire.
In January of 1983, Dolby released an EP, Blinded by Science, which includes what would become his most well-known track, "She Blinded Me with Science" featuring a cameo vocal appearance by the notorious British eccentric Magnus Pike, who also appeared in the song’s video. "She Blinded Me with Science" was a minor hit in England, but the EP and the single became a major American hit in 1983, thanks to MTV’s heavy airplay of the video. Eventually, the song reached number five on the US charts and it was included on a resequenced and reissued version of The Golden Age of Wireless, which peaked at number 13 in America.
The Flat Earth, Dolby's second album, appeared in early 1984, and harkens back to a time when songs mattered more than the video, even as MTV was discovering its strength. Opening with "Dissidents", conjuring up images of blacklisted authors and ugly snow, gray from oppression, with Matthew Seligman’s bass at the fore, lavish, growling, popping through octaves, funk-a-fied and twinkling with harmonics throughout the album. The title track is an R&B daydream of piano and Motown stabs of rhythm guitar. "Screen Kiss" has a similarly ethereal quality, and the lyrics are lush with imagery. The cover of Dan Hicks’ 1967 "I Scare Myself" is a balmy jazz club cocktail – faithfully nostalgic, right down to a bittersweet trombone solo from Peter Thomas. "Hyperactive" is one part bizarre to two parts infectious; guest vocalist Adele Bertei fuels the fire to what was already destined to be a memorable diversion beyond the reach of Top 40. The single became Thomas’ biggest UK hit, peaking at number 17.
During 1985, Dolby collaborated with artists including Stevie Wonder, Dusty Springfield and Herbie Hancock; and notched up some more high-concept production credits. George Clinton's Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends, Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen, and Joni Mitchell’s Dog Eat Dog were all midwifed by Dolby, who also was musical director for David Bowie at Live Aid. Also in 1985, he began composing film scores, starting with Fever Pitch. In 1986, he composed the scores for Gothic and Howard the Duck, for which he credited himself as Dolby's Cube. (That credit led to a lawsuit from the Dolby Labs, who eventually prohibited the musician from using the name "Dolby" in conjunction with any other name than "Thomas.")
Aliens Ate My Buick, Dolby's long-delayed third album, appeared in 1988 to a mixed reaction, although "Airhead" became a minor British hit. That same year, Dolby married actress Kathleen Beller. For the rest of the late 80s and early 90s, Dolby continued to score films, producing and building his own computer equipment.
1992’s Astronauts and Heretics, features guest stars such as Eddie Van Halen, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Ofra Haza. The album opens with "I Love You Goodbye", one of Thomas’ most evocative songs, and ends with "Beauty of a Dream" which is also a contender for that honour. Highlights found inbetween include "Cruel" (a duet with Fairground Attraction’s Eddie Reader), "I Live in a Suitcase" and "Close But No Cigar".
The following year, Dolby founded the computer software company Headspace in Silicon Valley, releasing The Virtual String Quartet as its first program, and also pioneered technology for music on mobile phones. For the rest of the 90s, Headspace occupied most of Dolby's time and energy. In 1994, he released The Gate to the Mind’s Eye, a soundtrack to the animated short film Mind’s Eye. Also that year, Capitol released the greatest-hits collection, Retrospectacle.
Thirteen years after Astronauts and Heretics, Dolby returned to live performance in 2006 with his solo Sole Inhabitant tour, which covered North America and the UK, with Thomas recreating the highlights of his earlier work from scratch, with a camera mounted like a miner’s lamp on his head, and a big screen showing the view from the artist, turning what would be a fairly dull one-man-and-a-rack-of-synths into a fascinating audio visual experience and an unintended masterclass for music technology students.
UK indie label Invisible Hands Music released a CD and DVD box set recorded on the Sole Inhabitant tour. These fresh and modern reinterpretations of Thomas’ work to date precedes a new studio album due in 2008, which is as-yet untitled, but does include a song about Britney’s ex Kevin Federline (“K-Fed”) who used an uncleared sample from "She Blinded Me with Science" and did not respond to legal approaches until a ‘cease-and-desist’ was posted in the comments field of his MySpace page. That song is called "My Karma Hit Your Dogma", and bodes well for a mighty return to form, combining Thomas’ humour and intelligence with a unique musical vision.
2011 saw Dolby get busy by returning with a new studio album A Map of the Floating City on 29 October. The album is broken down into three genres of Urbanoia's tales of city experiences; Amerikana as Dolby's take on his years living in America and it's roots music; and Oceanea: songs of life by the sea in his home country of England. The music was debuted first as download EPs to Dolby's online community and then previewed by a transmedia interactive game also called the FloatingCity.com.
Thomas Dolby is taking the music back on tour as a solo artist and with varying line-ups of bands, doing two tours of the UK in 2011, and has his first trip to Australia in February 2012 followed by dates in Japan. In March Dolby kicks off the Time-Capsule.tv tour at the SxSW Festival in Austin playing dates in USA and Canada through April. He will have a trailer parked at venues on his tour where you can produce a 30 second video offering words of wisdom to whoever will be walking the earth in the future. Dolby wants to give people a chance to “explain to an alien visitor what went wrong with our civilization. Our species may not be around on this planet much longer, so you might as well leave a welcome message for the next guys.”
Airwaves
Thomas Dolby Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
In tiny patterns
On my atenna
And The Five O'Clock Show, hello hello ...
Brooklyn is crawling with famous people
I turn my vehicle beneath the river, west from south
Through the airwaves-
Do we only feed the airwaves
I really should have seen through the airwaves
Electric fences line our new freeway
Here in the half-light, the motorhomes leave
Knee-deep in water under a pylon
How slow my heartbeat
How thin the air I'm breathing in
Through the airwaves -
People never read the airwaves
Do we only feed the airwaves
Or stamp them out at street level ?
Airwaves - the dampness of the wind
The airwaves - the tension of the skin
The airwaves
Be in my broadcast when this is over
Give me your shoulder, I need a place
To wait for morning
No it was nothing - some car backfiring -
Please don't ask questions
I itch all over
Let me sleep
Through the airwaves -
People never read the airwaves
Do we only feed the airwaves
Or stamp them out at street level ?
Airwaves - the dampness of the wind
The airwaves - the tension of the skin
The airwaves I really should have seen through ...
"Airwaves" by Thomas Dolby is a reflection on the power and influence of the media on the minds of the masses. Dolby observes how the airwaves can shape and control society's perspectives, beliefs and values, with people tuning into the radio, watching TV and listening to music, recording songs and feeding them back to the airwaves. The lyrics depict the subtle ways in which this control is exerted and highlight the importance of being aware and critical of the media messages transmitted through these channels.
The song starts with Dolby's observation of strange scale patterns on his antenna, which represents the fragile and ephemeral nature of the radio waves that make up the airwaves. As he cruises around Brooklyn, he notes how the airwaves are filled with famous people who are constantly being broadcasted. He then switches to describing the electric fences lining the freeways, which highlights a sense of confinement and control over people's movements. Eventually, he finds himself knee-deep in water under a pylon, feeling his heartbeat slow down as if being controlled by the dampness of the wind in the airwaves.
The chorus of the song repeatedly questions whether people are just feeding the airwaves or whether we are able to read and analyse their messages. Dolby's lyrics emphasize the power that the airwaves hold over us and suggest that we must be vigilant if we want to avoid being manipulated. The last verse implies that this vigilance is ultimately a personal battle, as the singer seeks refuge in the arms of someone they trust and admire - hoping to escape the madness of the world around them.
Line by Line Meaning
Strange how the scale forms
How patterns form unexpectedly.
In tiny patterns
In small details.
On my antenna
On my receiver.
And The Five O'Clock Show, hello hello ...
People greet each other on TV.
Brooklyn is crawling with famous people
Many celebrities live in Brooklyn.
I turn my vehicle beneath the river, west from south
I'm driving from south to west, under the river.
Through the airwaves-
Through radio signals,
People never read the airwaves
People don't pay attention to the signals transmitted.
Do we only feed the airwaves
Are we just broadcasting without anyone really listening?
I really should have seen through the airwaves
I should have realized this before.
Electric fences line our new freeway
There are barriers on the new road.
Here in the half-light, the motorhomes leave
Motorhomes are leaving in the dusk.
Knee-deep in water under a pylon
Standing in water beneath a pylon.
How slow my heartbeat
I'm calm.
How thin the air I'm breathing in
The air is not very dense.
Through the airwaves -
Through radio signals,
People never read the airwaves
People don't pay attention to the signals transmitted.
Do we only feed the airwaves
Are we just broadcasting without anyone really listening?
Or stamp them out at street level ?
Or censor them before they reach people?
Airwaves - the dampness of the wind
Radio signals are influenced by weather.
The airwaves - the tension of the skin
Radio signals can be felt on the skin.
The airwaves
Radio signals.
Be in my broadcast when this is over
Join me after the show is over.
Give me your shoulder, I need a place
I need support and comfort.
To wait for morning
To wait until daylight.
No it was nothing - some car backfiring -
Don't worry, it was just a car noise.
Please don't ask questions
Don't ask for more details.
I itch all over
I feel uncomfortable and restless.
Let me sleep
I want to rest.
Through the airwaves -
Through radio signals,
People never read the airwaves
People don't pay attention to the signals transmitted.
Do we only feed the airwaves
Are we just broadcasting without anyone really listening?
Or stamp them out at street level ?
Or censor them before they reach people?
Airwaves - the dampness of the wind
Radio signals are influenced by weather.
The airwaves - the tension of the skin
Radio signals can be felt on the skin.
The airwaves I really should have seen through ...
I should have realized the truth about radio signals.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: THOMAS DOLBY
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind