[6] The song, which makes a nostalgic defence of the radio format, was a worldwide success for the band, reaching number one in 19 countries, number two on the UK Singles Chart and the Australian Kent Music Report and number 16 on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming the band's final original single to reach the US top 40 in Freddie Mercury's lifetime on that chart (whereas their follow-up singles would give them frequent top 40 appearances on the Mainstream Rock chart).

[11][12][13][14] The music video for the song uses footage from the 1927 silent science fiction film Metropolis.

[7] It also addressed the advent of the music video and MTV, which was then competing with radio as an important medium for promoting records.

[17]The song refers to two important radio events of the 20th century: Orson Welles' 1938 broadcast of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds in the lyric "through wars of worlds/invaded by Mars", and Winston Churchill's 18 June 1940 "This was their finest hour" speech from the House of Commons, in the lyric "You've yet to have your finest hour".

[19] After hearing the phrase, Taylor began writing and developing the song when he locked himself in a studio for three days with a synthesizer and a LinnDrum drum machine.

[20] He thought it would fit his solo album, but when the band heard it, John Deacon wrote a bassline and Freddie Mercury reconstructed the track, thinking it could be a big hit.

Taylor then took a skiing holiday and let Mercury polish the song's lyrics, harmony, and arrangements.

[22] 7" single[2] 12" single[2] David Mallet's music video for the song features scenes from Fritz Lang's 1927 German expressionist science fiction film Metropolis and also includes footage of the band traveling through Metropolis and singing the song in a stylized re-creation of its underground machine rooms, which is interconnected with people donning gas masks and taking shelter in their homes during wartime and of one such family passing the time in various ways that include listening to the radio.

However, Queen had to buy performance rights to the film from the communist East German government, which was the copyright holder at the time.

[26] Queen finished their sets before the encores on The Works Tour with "Radio Ga Ga" and Mercury would normally sing "you had your time" in a lower octave and modify the deliveries of "you had the power, you've yet to have your finest hour" while Roger Taylor sang the pre-chorus in the high octave.

[14] Paul Young performed the song with Queen at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert again at Wembley Stadium on 20 April 1992.

The concert album Live in Ukraine resulted from this tour, yet the song is not available on the CD or DVD versions released on 15 June 2009.