Signals is the ninth studio album by Canadian rock band Rush, released on September 9, 1982 by Anthem Records. After the release of their previous album, Moving Pictures, the band started to prepare material for a follow-up during soundchecks on their 1981 concert tour and during the mixing of their subsequent live album Exit…Stage Left. Signals demonstrates the group’s continuing use of synthesizers, sequencers, and other electronic instrumentation. It is the last album produced by their longtime associate Terry Brown, who had worked with them since 1974. The album peaked at No. 1 in Canada, No. 3 in the United Kingdom, and No. 10 in the United States. In November 1982, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling one million copies in the United States.

We start off with a fan favourite in Subdivisions, which is odd for an album opener as it isn’t the rock anthem but a mid-tempo number. The song is a commentary on social stratification through the pressure to adopt certain lifestyles. It describes young people dealing with a “cool” culture amidst a comfortable yet oppressively mundane suburban existence in housing subdivisions. Anyone who does not obey social expectations is regarded as an outcast; the lyrics flatly describe a choice of “conform or be cast out”. The song has resonated with a whole of Rush fans, especially the ones who are considered nerds and/or non-cool. Analog Kid is the second single from the album and also the second track. Drummer and lyricist Neil Peart wrote the lyrics for the song at first as a companion piece to “Digital Man“, a song that Rush had started working on in late 1981, and presented it to bassist Geddy Lee.

The next song, Chemistry, lyrically seems to be about how everything is basically chemical reactions – life and everything that we know and see. The next track, The Weapon, is about politics and power and the race to make bigger and deadlier weapons. New world Man was the last and most quickly composed song on the album, stemming from a suggestion by then-Rush producer Terry Brown to even out the lengths of the two sides of the cassette version. It went to #1 (on the RPM national singles chart) in Canada, where it remained for two weeks in October 1982. It gave Rush a hit single due to its “hypnotic synthesizer pop with flashes of guitar rock. Losing It is about watching it all fade away and aging.

Finally Countdown – it’s lyrics are about the first launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia the previous year. The song incorporates audio from voice communications between astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen and ground control, specifically Ascent CAPCOM Daniel C. Brandenstein and with commentary from Hugh Harris, Kennedy Space Center Public Affairs Officer, leading up to the launch through to LOS just after Press to Rota. Rush released three singles from the album: “New World Man“, which became the band’s highest charting single in the United States and a number-one hit in Canada, as well as “Subdivisions” and “Countdown“. The group supported Signals with a concert tour from April 1982 to May 1983. Signals has been reissued several times, including a remaster with a new stereo and 5.1 surround sound mix in 2011.