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Fifty years old this month, Kraftwerk's single Radioactivity was a groundbreaking track that morphed into the German electronic pioneers' most political protest song.

From the tremulous opening seconds of Kraftwerk's Radioactivity – a pulsing Geiger counter; escalating synths; shrill morse code spelling out the title – you sense that nothing will sound the same again.

This core track from the German electronic pioneers' fifth studio album Radio-Activity (1975) feels like a scientific hymn, but it also strikes warning notes within its insistent hooks and haunting Sprechgesang (spoken singing) refrain: "Radioactivity / Is in the air for you and me".

Over the decades, Radioactivity itself has mutated, from elegiac melody to club banger and an anti-nuclear clarion call, while remaining fantastically distinctive.…