Turn Up The Radio by Autograph

Album: Sign In Please (1984)

Charted: 29

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Songfacts®:

This was the only hit for Autograph, which was a Rock band from Los Angeles. The band members were music veterans, but had been together only a few months when they got a huge gig opening for Van Halen on their 1984 tour. David Lee Roth would jog with Autograph drummer Keni Richards, and invited them on the tour after hearing their demo tape. "Turn Up The Radio," with it's anthemic chorus and quotable lyric "Things go better with rock," was their only hit; the band released two more albums and broke up in 1989.
MTV was 3 years old when this song was released, and it was attracting a huge audience. In one of the earliest examples of product placement in a music video, Paper Mate funded the video in exchange for the band using their pen in the clip, which shows the band "Signing in" at the beginning. It was a great bit of marketing, as the video went into regular rotation on MTV, and Paper Mate got to demonstrate the benefits of their amazing erasable pen. Yes, hair metal and erasable pens - we were definitely in the '80s.
This song was used on an episode of Miami Vice, and also appeared in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Comments: 6

Jack Shaffer from Elyria ,ohioI've done some online research to find out if the actor Luke Perry was an Extra in the "Audiance?" Nothing so far.
William from Cambridge,ohiowas the papermate pen product drop the first deliberate product placement in a video or movie..
Wheat from Tacoma,washingtonStill listen to the great song today, cool band, cool video, and I graduated H.S. in 1984, so that was a great year too.
Chris from Atlanta, GaThe girl that caught the pen (the crappy Paper Mate click pen that is thrown into the crowd as the band got into the limo) looks familiar. Bits parts, etc... Any idea who she is? Curious what came of her "career".
Barry from Sauquoit, NyOn February 16th 1985, Autograph performed "Turn Up The Radio" on the ABC-TV program 'American Bandstand'
Two months earlier on December 16th, 1984 it entered Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart at position #89; and on March 10th, 1985 it peaked at #29 (for 1 week) and spent 15 weeks on the Top 100...
Was track two of side one on the group's debut album, "Sign In Please"; and the album reached #29 on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart.
Jeff from Austin, Txone of the greatest choruses in history

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