Guerrilla Radio
by Rage Against the Machine
- 103
- BPM
- B major
- Key
- 1B
- Camelot
- 60
- Danceability
- 2
- Acousticness
Zack de la Rocha wore a "Free Mumia Abu-Jamal" T-shirt on November 3, 1999, when Rage Against the Machine played "Guerrilla Radio" on the Late Show with David Letterman. He also gave the middle finger on live television. The appearance drew controversy.
The song was the lead single from The Battle of Los Angeles, the band's third album. It reached No. 69 on the Billboard Hot 100, the only Rage Against the Machine song to chart there. It won the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. It is also one of 31 music files in Sony BMG v. Tenenbaum, the case that found an individual file-sharer liable for copyright infringement in July 2009, with an award of $22,500 a song.
The video came from the production company Squeak Pictures and the husband-and-wife directing team Honey, Laura Kelly and Nicholas Brooks. It opens on workers at sewing stations in an all-white room. A scratching record cuts in and the phrase "everybody in denial" flashes on screen. The band replaces the workers. A young couple's day out runs through the clip, and both of them turn plastic and mannequin-like. The video touches on the exploitation of garment workers and parodies late-1990s Gap commercials. "Everybody in denial" plays on "everybody in khaki."
Guerrilla Radio runs at 103 BPM, the tempo of mid-tempo pop, dancehall and indie. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.33 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 583 ms. It is in B major, Camelot 1B, which shares its notes with Ab minor and mixes cleanly with E major and F# major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.