Radio Ga Ga was then competing with radio as an important medium for promoting records. The video for "Radio Ga Ga" would receive a Best Art Direction nomination. Roger Taylor was quoted: Taylor originally conceived of it as "Radio " (from something his toddler son once said), which doubled as a criticism of radio for the decrease in variety of programming and the type of music being played. The song makes reference to two important radio events of the 20th century; Orson Welles' 1938 broadcast of H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" in the lyric "through wars of worlds/invaded by Mars",
The Spanish Earth the subject, the apolitical 1937 film, "The Last Train from Madrid". A later film, "Blockade" (1938), was also sympathetic to the Republicans. Orson Welles, who starred in Archibald MacLeish's verse play, "Panic" (1935), and had recently performed the role of narrator in his CBS Radio verse play, "The Fall of the City", recorded the narration for "The Spanish Earth" in May 1937. An additional English-language release is narrated by Ernest Hemingway. A French-language version is narrated by Jean Renoir. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt invited Hemingway and Ivens to show the film at the White House in advance