"In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)" 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, going up a half step in the key of the song, after two stanzas, first from A flat minor, to A minor, and, then, finally, to B flat minor, 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 is,
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...,
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.
Then the song effectively "starts over" with the first verse again and then fades out, 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 late 1960s.
The song describes a nightmarish vision of the future as man's technological inventions gradually dehumanize him. It includes a 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 and concepts 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 before their prediction in the song, the science of In vitro fertilisation 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, for the most part, been mentioned in the mainstream media until "In The Year 2525" was released in 1969. The concept of sustainability is brought up in the final prediction of 9595 with:
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 nothin'
In one of the daily newscasts to the crew of Apollo 11 capsule communicator Ronald Evans told the returning crew that "In the Year 2525" was currently number one on the Billboard charts after also informing the crew about the large number of Moon based songs that had just been written following the successful moon landing.
[edit] LegacyIt is unusual for a recording artist to have a number one hit and then never have another chart single for the rest of their career. "In the Year 2525" actually gave "Zager & Evans" this status twice: they remain the only act to do this in both the U.S. and UK singles charts. The duo also recorded and released the song in Italian under the title of "Nel Due Mila Venti Tre" ("In The Year 2023"). Their follow up 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 hit the main music charts on either side of the Atlantic (although it did manage to make the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart, peaking at #106).
The song has been covered at least 60 times in 7 different languages.[1] A notable version of In the Year 2525 is sung by the italo-french pop singer, Dalida; another one by 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.[2] 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, by the electronic body music band Project Pitchfork (album Dhyani), 1991, by the German electronic band Strauss & Roggenbuck, and most recently by Ian Brown on his 2009 album "My Way".
In the 1992 movie Alien 3, 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 song appeared on the list of songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks.[citation needed]
The song still receives regular airplay on many radio stations. It was often featured as bumper music on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell (before Bell retired).[original research?] "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.[citation needed] Upon release by RCA in 1969, it quickly became a multi-million-seller.[citation needed]
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".[citation needed] Others differ, calling the one-hit wonder "prophetic".[3]
The White Stripes refer to "the year 2525" in the song "You're Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)" on their album De Stijl (2000).[4]
The song was prominently featured in the 2009 comedy Gentlemen Broncos starring Michael Angarano, Sam Rockwell and Jemaine Clement.
The song is also featured during the opening credits of the war movie 1968 Tunnel Rats.
A parody of the song entitled "In the Year 252525" appears in the sixth season Futurama episode, "The Late Philip J. Fry".
The band 65daysofstatic used a remixed version of the song which looped and repeated the number 65 when it was reached to enter the stage for their shows in 2009.
This band has AMAZING songs, probably I will post more of them.
