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Arwa Haider

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Fifty years old this month, Kraftwerk's single Radioactivity was a groundbreaking track that morphed into the German electronic pioneers' most political protest song.

From the tremulous opening seconds of Kraftwerk's Radioactivity – a pulsing Geiger counter; escalating synths; shrill morse code spelling out the title – you sense that nothing will sound the same again.

This core track from the German electronic pioneers' fifth studio album Radio-Activity (1975) feels like a scientific hymn, but it also strikes warning notes within its insistent hooks and haunting Sprechgesang (spoken singing) refrain: "Radioactivity / Is in the air for you and me". 

Over the decades, Radioactivity itself has mutated, from elegiac melody to club banger and an anti-nuclear clarion call, while remaining fantastically distinctive. Half-a-century on, the album is reissued for its 50th anniversary, and this anthem still crackles with Kraftwerk's creative power.

Kraftwerk originally recorded their Radio-Activity album between bursts of transatlantic tour dates. It extended the experimental pop and deadpan wit of their international breakthrough Autobahn (1974), with lyrics in both English and German. 

It was also a curiosity, evoking a new "information age" as well as a Cold War-era dread. It debuted Kraftwerk's "classic" quartet line-up: co-founders Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider (who co-produced the album at the band's Kling Klang studio in Düsseldorf), Karl Bartos, and Wolfgang Flür.

I discovered Kraftwerk because they were the heroes of my heroes. It was like travelling back in time to tune into tomorrow

Their music moved into fully electronic realms, coolly detaching from Kraftwerk's earlier folky/jazzy style (where Schneider had played flute and violin); their signature synth sounds were sealed, including on the punchy Minimoog and the eerie chorals of the Vako Orchestron. Despite the album's relative brevity (its 12 tracks run to under 38 minutes), its atmosphere is intoxicating – and there is always a sense of wonder amid the tension.

"It's a science fiction kind of album," Hütter, the band's remaining original member, told Uncut magazine's Stephen Dalton in 2009. "Horror and beauty. The concept was infiltration by radio station – which is maybe more dangerous than radioactivity. We worked with tapes, editing pieces, glue. All electronics. And more singing and speaking, like speech symphonies."

'A signpost to the future' 

Kraftwerk's entire catalogue is a kind of extraordinary circuit board, connecting to unlimited musical styles: hip-hop; electro; ambient; new wave; synth pop; industrial rock; Detroit techno; contemporary classical. Radio-Activity particularly seized the spirit of sound and vision. The original artwork was designed by long-time collaborator Emil Schult, while the music was presented in increasingly ambitious ways: in Flür's book, I Was a Robot, he relates playing Radioactivity live using a light-triggered "percussion cage", which would frequently glitch onstage. The album has been sampled by acts including New Order (most famously on Blue Monday), The Chemical Brothers, and Miley Cyrus.

Many of the artists from my period wouldn't have existed in the way that we do now, if it weren't for Kraftwerk – Martyn Ware

The band have also been cited as an inspiration by stars from David Bowie to Ryuichi Sakamoto (who once told US journalist Jim Sullivan that he'd co-founded Yellow Magic Orchestra because "we wanted to make a Japanese Kraftwerk") and the composer Max Richter (who once told me that, aged 13, he'd written to the BBC after hearing Kraftwerk on TV for the first time: "I freaked out, because I'd never heard electronic music before… I thought: 'I've got to get my hands on a synthesizer' – and then I found out a synthesizer costs as much as a house"). 

As music tech progressively became more accessible, it sparked further possibilities – and as a young music fan, I discovered Kraftwerk because they were the heroes of my heroes. It was like travelling back in time to tune into tomorrow.

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Over the decades the song Radioactivity has mutated from elegiac melody to an anti-nuclear clarion call (Credit: Alamy)

"Kraftwerk are one of the pillars of my creativity," says celebrated musician/composer/producer Martyn Ware, whose own repertoire includes co-founding late-'70s/'80s trail-blazers The Human League, Heaven 17, and British Electric Foundation, as well as hosting his Electronically Yours podcast series. "Many of the artists from my period wouldn't have existed in the way that we do now, if it weren't for Kraftwerk.

"It kind of started when I met Phil Oakey [who would later become The Human League's frontman] at school; he had a much bigger record collection than me, which was an awakening. We got into Kraftwerk together, before they were even an electronic band. The thing that really changed it for me was Radio-Activity. It's conceptual art, it didn't sound like anyone else. I loved the bravery of Radio-Activity, and there's a certain gentleness, as well. It's ethereal, like there was a profound intelligence behind it all." 

Growing up in the British industrial city of Sheffield, Ware adds that this music deeply resonated: "Kraftwerk's sonic impressionism painted strong pictures. They used found sound in combination with electronics, and it felt like a signpost to the future for us."

An unusually political work 

By the turn of the '90s, Kraftwerk's impact on club culture was unmistakable; their dancefloor-driven collection The Mix (1991) featured recharged versions of '70s and early '80s classics such as Autobahn, The Robots and Trans-Europe Express – and a particularly radical reinvention of Radioactivity.

Whereas the original track hailed scientific innovation ("discovered by Marie Curie"), the new version was an emphatically anti-nuclear anthem ("Stop radioactivity"), opening with a vocoder roll-call of power station disasters and atomic horror ("Chernobyl… Harrisburg… Sellafield… Hiroshima"), with additional lyrics highlighting nuclear devastation ("Chain reaction and mutation/ Contaminated population").

It's really unbelievable that Radioactivity was released 50 years ago. With those high morse code pulses, half-tempo electro drums and epic synth bass, it could be a new vaporwave track – Kees Berkers

Radioactivity had shape-shifted into a thrilling protest song and party anthem, emblazoned with trefoil symbols. Kraftwerk played this version live at 1992's Stop Sellafield concert organised by Greenpeace, and at UK festival all-nighter Tribal Gathering in 1997 – where I watched breathlessly as a young clubber, before racing to the nearest record shop to buy my first Kraftwerk album.

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Kraftwerk's classic quartet line-up was Karl Bartos, Ralph Hütter, Wolfgang Flür and Florian Schneider (Credit: Getty Images)

The reworked Radioactivity has become a fixture at Kraftwerk's packed live shows in recent years, though it's often regarded as an unusually political work from a largely enigmatic outfit. In a 2012 live review, Rolling Stone described Radioactivity as "the band's only overt piece of activism… an all-out DEFCON 3 protest against nuclear power".

For Ware, its adaptation made absolute sense: "I think, by the time they came around to the remix album, they were totally different people," he says. "The function of an artist is to reflect the times, and to make an authentic statement based on your lived experience. So I'm not surprised at all."

The track lives on in an uncertain world

Radioactivity also arguably sounds more relevant than ever, in a modern world beset by warfare and environmental damage. In 2012, Ryuichi Sakamoto invited Kraftwerk to play the No Nukes concert in Tokyo, and Radioactivity's lyrics were expanded again, namechecking Fukushima, where a major nuclear disaster occurred in 2011.

At the time, Sakamoto explained in a broadcast for Japanese radio station J-Wave: "They [Kraftwerk] have been putting out strong anti-nuclear messages since 1991, so I thought they might sympathise with us… We exchanged emails almost every day, and I helped them a little, and we put the [Radioactivity] lyrics into Japanese. It was also the first time Kraftwerk and YMO had met in 31 years."

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Radioactivity remains in the air – and on-screen (it's featured on soundtracks from German arthouse movies to Brazilian telenovelas). It has been covered in a range of musical styles, from Fatboy Slim's kitsch funk reworking, to a dreamy country-folk version by Yellow Magic Orchestra's Haruomi Hosono. For new generations of artists and music fans, Kraftwerk still sound like a vital shock to the system. 

"Radioactivity, and the album around it, is like a collection of sketches, experimenting with different synthesizers and sonic effects, and making new ideas out of them," says indie musician/writer Nabihah Iqbal, who will premiere her new commission for electronics and strings at Goodwood Art Foundation later this month. "The amazing thing is that even now, you can hear how that work has gone on to permeate so many different types of music. They set the blueprint for what's possible."

"Kraftwerk have such a unique approach to music," says Kees Berkers of Dutch psych-funk band Yin Yin (who have previously covered another Kraftwerk classic, The Model). "It's really unbelievable that Radioactivity was released 50 years ago. With those high morse code pulses, half-tempo electro drums and epic synth bass, it could be a new vaporwave track. Absolute game-changers!"

The modern world may feel uncertain, but Radioactivity lives on in the digital age. "Young people don't associate songs with a particular time as much anymore," says Ware. "They don't see this track as a nostalgia trip. They're listening to the DNA of their lingua franca, which is music made on a laptop."

Radio-Activity is reissued on 15 May. Kraftwerk are currently on a world tour.

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