Walter Becker and Donald Fagen wrote this song for the 1978 movie FM, which takes place at a radio station and was the precursor to the television series WKRP in Cincinnati.
Becker and Fagen performed the song in the movie, which came at a time
when FM Radio was relatively new and catching up to AM in popularity. As
the song points out, FM has a lot less static than AM, but at the time,
a big selling point of FM radio stations was their ability to take
chances by playing lesser known bands and album cuts.
Walter Carl Becker (February 20, 1950 - September 3, 2017)
Donald Fagen recalled writing this song in California to American Songwriter magazine. "There was a film called FM and we were asked to do the title song," he said. "And I said, 'Does it have to have any specific words?' And they said, 'No, it just has to be about FM radio.' We wrote that very quickly, I remember, in one or two days. And we also recorded it very quickly, too. Johnny Mandel came in and did the string chart. It was fun to meet Johnny Mandel."
