Songfacts®:

• This is an autobiographical song. In the late '70s, Tom Robinson enjoyed considerable success with the albums Power In The Darkness and TRB2, but his new band Sector 27 ended in financial disaster, and he fled to Hamburg to escape the taxman. From there he moved to East Berlin, and over the next couple of years he appears to have led a fairly low key life learning German while he got his act back together working with a local band; the song reflects this.
• Although "Listen To The Radio" was first released on the album North By Northwest on the Castaway label, it was re-recorded for a single and also appeared on his next album Hope And Glory on the same label two years later. Robinson played keyboards and guitar as well as providing the vocal. The single was released in June 1983 and received heavy airplay in the UK. The following month he told the Sun newspaper that earlier that year he'd been advised to record under a different name, now suddenly he was flavor of the month again.
• The song was released as both a 7 inch single and a 12 inch; Robinson also made a somewhat bizarre video of it in 1983, produced by Tim Bevan. "Listen To The Radio" was co-written with Peter Gabriel of Genesis fame. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England, for all above