The Spirit of Radio

Peart wrote the words as a lament for the way FM radio moved from free-form programming to commercial formats in the late 1970s. The title was the slogan of CFNY-FM in Brampton, Ontario, a station that had kept to free-form programming. Lifeson said he wanted the opening riff to give a sense of static, like radio waves bouncing around. The closing section is a reggae passage, which the band added, in Lifeson's words, to make themselves smile and have a little fun. Its lyrics echo Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence.

Issued as a single in February 1980, it reached number 13 in Britain in March, which remains their biggest British hit, and number 51 on the American Hot 100 and number 22 in Canada. A live version reached number 27 on the Mainstream Rock chart in 1998. The seven-inch edit ran 3:00. The song is on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll, and was one of five Rush songs inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010. The band released an animated video made by Fantoons Animation Studio on 12 June 2020 for the 40th anniversary of Permanent Waves.