In the Year 2525

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"In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)" is the title of a hit song from 1969 by the Lincoln, Nebraska duo Zager and Evans, which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks, commencing July 12. The song was written by Rick Evans in 1964 and originally released on a small local record label in 1967. Two years later, an Odessa, Texas radio station popularized the disc, which RCA Records quickly picked up for nationwide distribution.

Contents

[edit] Song summary

The song opens with the words "In the year 2525, If man is still alive, If woman can survive, They may find...". Subsequent verses pick up the story at 1010-year intervals from 2525 to 6565. Disturbing predictions are given for each selected year. In the year 3535, for example, all of a person's actions, words and thoughts will be preprogrammed into a daily pill. Then the pattern as well as the music changes and verses for the years 7510, 8510 and 9595 follow.

The song has no chorus. Amid ominous-sounding orchestral music, the final dated chronological verse reads In the year 9595, I'm kinda wonderin' if Man is gonna be alive. He's taken everything this old Earth can give, and he ain't put back nothing, whoa-whoa... Thus making specific an underlying environmental message of the song. The summary verse concludes: Now it's been 10,000 years, Man has cried a billion tears, For what, he never knew. Now man's reign is through. But through eternal night, The twinkling of starlight. So very far away, Maybe it's only yesterday.), before the song effectively "starts over" with the first verse again and then fades out. Thus leaving open the possibility that "we went through this before," and life is now at the start of another cycle.

The overriding theme, of a world doomed by its passive acquiescence to and overdependence on its own overdone technologies, struck a resonant chord in millions of people around the world in the 1960s.

The song is based on a nightmarish vision of the future as man's technological inventions gradually dehumanize him. The song includes a sly colloquial reference to the Second Coming (In the year 7510, if God's a' coming, He ought to make it by then.) which echoed the zeitgeist of the Jesus Movement. The song also references examples of technologies that were not fully developed but were known to the public in 1969, such as robots, as well as future technology that would come into existence long after being prophesied in the song, the science of test tube babies and genetic selection by parents of their future children. Such a concept had been explored in a few science fiction novels but had not yet been mentioned in the mainstream media until "In The Year 2525" was released in 1969.

[edit] Legacy

It is not common for a recording artist to have a number one hit single and then never have another chart single for the rest of their career. "In the Year 2525" gave Zager and Evans this dubious status twice. They were, and remain, the only act to do this in both the U.S. and UK singles charts. Their followup single on RCA-Victor, "Mr. Turnkey" (a song about a rapist who nails his own wrist to the wall as punishment for his crime), failed to chart.

The song has been covered many times. One notable version is the UK new romantic group Visage. Another version was used as the theme song for the short-lived science fiction series Cleopatra 2525. It is also featured in both parts of the two-part second season finale of Millennium where a man-made virus is threatening to wipe out humanity.[1] The Slovenian industrial group Laibach edited the lyrics in their cover version to make it appropriate for 1994's NATO album. There was also a dance cover of this song by The Act featuring Clinton III in 1993. More recently, it was covered by the gothic rock band Fields of the Nephilim, and by the electronic body music band Project Pitchfork (album Dhyani, 1991).

Also, in the movie Alien³, which debuted in 1992, a prisoner is heard singing a line or two of the song, while scraping the inside of a ventilator shaft, shortly before he is attacked by a juvenile Xenomorph and subsequently diced by a large ventilation fan. The movie takes place a few hundred years after the 20th century.

Oddly, the song appeared on the list of songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks. It would seem the only connection to the terrorist attacks is the song's apocalyptic tone. The subject matter is completely different although one could say that the unnecessarily widespread dissemination of a dangerous technology--jet aircraft flight knowledge--led to the attacks, and the song's lyrics warn of overusage and overdependence on technology.

The song still receives regular airplay on many radio stations. It is often featured as bumper music on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell. "In The Year 2525" was one of the 10 biggest singles of the 1960s in the United States, although it didn't neatly fit into any of the main categories of rock music. Upon release by RCA in 1969, it quickly became a multi-million-seller.

According to Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell, authors of The Worst Rock and Roll Records of All Time (1991), who place the song at number six on their list of the 50 worst rock-and-roll singles, "science fiction and rock and roll don't mix any better than Zsa Zsa Gabor and reality". Others differ, calling the one-hit wonder "prophetic" [2].

[edit] Trivia

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  • The song was at the top of the Billboard magazine Hot 100 charts when Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon.
  • Dalida recorded this song with slightly different lyrics in French [L'an 2005] and Italian [Nel 2023] in 1969.
  • The song was referenced in The Simpsons, when Lisa is seen reading a psychic magazine with a cover headline "The year 2525: Were Zager & Evans right?"
  • It was also referenced in the first Sci-Fi channel MST3K episode, Revenge of the Creature when Professor Bobo reveals it's the year 2525 and the bots ask in turn if "Man was still alive", if "Woman survived" and if "you could pick your son, pick your daughter too from the bottom of a long glass tube".
  • In 2007 Internet service provider Embarq used a variation of this song in a commercial.
  • On the 25th anniversary episode of the hit sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, actor/comedian Bill Murray sang a version of this song that replaced its original lyrics to correspond with the fate of the show Saturday Night Live "in the year 2525".[3]
  • The song is referenced in the White Stripes song, "You're Pretty Good Looking (For A Girl)" - "this feeling is still going to linger on / until the year 2525 now"
  • The song is written about in Tom Reynolds' book I Hate Myself And Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard in the Chapter “I’m Trying To Be Profound and Touching, But Really Suck At It”.
  • According to some calculations, the Age of Aquarius will start in or around the year 2525. It is unclear if this had any influence on the choice of year.
  • The song's opening line is sung by martians in Martians Go Home, a 1990 comedy film starring Randy Quaid as he is trying to ignore them so that they will go back to Mars.
  • In Dave Barry's "Tricky Business" (2003), it is used as a "revenge tune". The band plays this song to punish the audience for having requested songs they are bored of playing.
  • The song was referenced in The Drew Carey Show, when Winfred-Louder is celebrating the store's centennial. Mr. Wick announces Mimi's arrival as 'Future Woman' (Wearing a plastic bubble and silver dress) with the first two lines of the song.

[edit] Similar works

[edit] See also

Preceded by
"Love Theme From Romeo and Juliet" by Henry Mancini		 Billboard Hot 100 number one single
July 12, 1969		 Succeeded by
"Honky Tonk Women" by The Rolling Stones
Preceded by
"Honky Tonk Women" by The Rolling Stones		 UK number one single
August 26, 1969		 Succeeded by
"Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival

[edit] References

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