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"2525" redirects here. For the year 2525, see 26th century. The 26th century of the Anno Domini ( common) era will span the years 2501&ndash2600 of the Gregorian calendar.

"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 City of Lincoln ( Umóⁿhoⁿ: Nískithe Tʰóⁿwoⁿgthoⁿ ˈnĩskiˡðe ˌtʰãwãŋgˡðã meaning "Salt Village" for Salt Creek which was the Zager and Evans were a Lincoln Nebraska rock - pop duo of the late 1960s and early 1970s named after its two members Denny Zager and 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. Odessa is a city in Ector and Midland Counties in the US state of Texas. RCA Records (originally The Victor Talking Machine Company, then RCA Victor is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment.

Contents

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. In Christianity, the Second Coming is the anticipated return of Jesus Christ from Heaven to earth an event that will fulfill aspects of Messianic ) which echoed the zeitgeist of the Jesus Movement. Zeitgeist ( pronounced) is a German language expression literally translated Zeit time; Geist spirit, meaning "the The Jesus movement was the major Christian element within the Hippie Counterculture, or conversely the major hippie element within some strands of 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. In vitro fertilisation ( IVF) is a process by which 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.

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. In Popular music, a cover version, or simply cover, is a new rendition ( Performance or Recording) of a previously recorded commercially released One notable version is the UK new romantic group Visage. New Romantic was a short- lived Fashion and music movement that occurred primarily in the United Kingdom and Ireland during the very early 1980s Visage is a British pop band Formed in 1978 the band became closely linked to the burgeoning New Romantic movement of the early 1980s Another version was used as the theme song for the short-lived science fiction series Cleopatra 2525. Cleopatra 2525 is a Science fiction television series that aired for two seasons starting January 2000 and ending March 2001 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. Millennium is an American supernatural thriller and crime drama television series produced by Chris Carter (creator of The X-Files [1] The Slovenian industrial group Laibach edited the lyrics in their cover version to make it appropriate for 1994's NATO album. Laibach is a Slovenian avant-garde Music group strongly associated with industrial, martial, and neo-classical musical NATO October 10 1994 is an album by Slovenian industrial / techno group Laibach, named after NATO 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). This article is about the musical style of gothic rock For the goth scene in general see Goth subculture. Fields of the Nephilim is a Gothic rock band formed in Stevenage, Hertfordshire in 1984. Electronic body music ( EBM, also known as aggropop) is a Music genre that combines elements of Industrial music and Electronic Not to be confused with Projekt or Pro-jekt Project Pitchfork is a Darkwave musical group from Hamburg, Germany.

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. Alien 3, styled as Alien³, is a 1992 Science fiction / Horror film (see 1992 in film) The alien, also called the xenomorph, or a thing and by Ellen Ripley in a deleted scene from Alien³. 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. Bumper music is a term used in the Radio broadcasting industry to refer to short clips of music used to buffer transitions between programming elements Coast to Coast AM is an American late-night Syndicated Radio Talk show which deals with a variety of topics but most frequently "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. RCA Corporation, founded as Radio Corporation of America, was an electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986

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". Zsa Zsa Gabor ( born February 6 1917) is a Hungarian -born American Actress and Socialite. Others differ, calling the one-hit wonder "prophetic" [2].

Trivia

Similar works

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

References

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