ZAGER AND EVANS - “In The Year 2525 (Exordium And Terminus)”
(#275, 30th August 1969)
Science-fiction songs are rare visitors to the mundane world of Earth’s pop charts, and a song that goes beyond sci-fi into a genuinely apocalyptic future vision - a kind of folk-rock Olaf Stapledon! - is more unusual still. Everything about Zager and Evans’ hit - the high-sounding subtitle, the pained vocal nobility, the trilling melodrama of the guitars - could easily be read as kitsch now, but it carries a weird power and conviction too. This is actually enhanced by the quite boring song structure and the clunky phrasing - “You won’t find a thing to chew” - and goes some way to explaining both why it hit so big and why these time-tossed prophets failed to follow it up ever. On the other hand, if your comment on this is “totally ridiculous” I’m not actually going to disagree. 5
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FT's Tom on September 22nd, 2006
And the moon landings probably had something to do with it too.
Important contribution to yr understanding: http://www.ezgeta.com/2525.html
Magnus on September 22nd, 2006
That link in Tom’s post is NSFW!
FT's Tom on September 22nd, 2006
Many apologies Magnus! This is true, it has painted bosoms in it.
FT's Steve Mannion on September 22nd, 2006
This is my favourite use of parentheses in a #1 single.
FT's Tom on September 22nd, 2006
The touch I particularly like, btw, is the sudden switch from “6565″ to “7510″ in order to rhyme with “then”…OR IS IT THAT THEY KNOW SOMETHING!!
jeff w on September 22nd, 2006
Good joke in the movie Alien cubed (set in the year 2179 according to Wiki): the first guy to get offed is singing this song just beforehand.
blount on September 22nd, 2006
this has always sounded like some ridiculous apocalyptic ‘age of aquarius/let the sunshine in’ to me. somehow i never bought it’s silliness (and i’m an easy sell on silliness) and the sci-fi aspect passed me by entirely even though as that font makes clear it’s a MAJOR FACTOR in the song.
FT's GeorgeB on September 23rd, 2006
Seems more in keeping with the cheesy sci-fi stuff that was standard fare on tv around this time, than the moon landings. In fact this is so awful it could almost be read as a musical rendition of an Irwin Allen tv show -the dishonest mix of affectation, melodrama and dollops of portentous claptrap. If this cheap and nasty and empty concoction deserves to be a mere 4 marks off “Grapevine”, I’m an alien.
Tom on September 23rd, 2006
How can it be ‘dishonest’!! We’re still 519 years off proving that?!
More seriously, I take yr point, but I don’t think anyone could undertake this project (and stay sane) without an affection for bonkers novelty hits, so expect plenty more high marks to come.
intothefireuk on September 23rd, 2006
Having a big affection for ‘cheesy sci-fi’ I actually like this. For me a musical rendition of an Irwin Allen (or even a Gerry Anderson show) would not be a bad thing but judging by the responses so far I must be alone in these thoughts. I even like the font ! The only disappointment for me is that the punchline at the end is a little rushed. By punchline I mean the bit where man’s had it and ‘maybe it’s only yesterday’ and back to the beginning. Hopefully I haven’t got this wrong and it’s some sly reference to the Mccartney tune. It’s camp and it doesn’t know it and it’s all the better for it. I wouldn’t have any problem with it scoring at least an 8.
FT's GeorgeB on September 23rd, 2006
Lyrically, isn’t it more about Jesus and the Bible than Macca? There are bits about the Rapture in there - which is a bit worrying, and which adds to the seriousness of it all, which is the main turn-off. Bonkers it surely is Tom, but I just don’t think it has the charm that a good novelty record needs. Apparently it was written in 64 (which puts it in the same era as Eve of Destruction? Is it a sci-fi folk song?!)and was picked up Texas radio a couple of years later and took another 3 years to reach the top.
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on September 23rd, 2006
covered by LAIBACH and FIELDS OF THE NEPH!!
Chris Brown on September 23rd, 2006
Yeah, I’d go with “lack of charm” too. I don’t know if it’s exactly the seriousness that I’d blame for that, but there’s certainly something in there that keeps it from being likeable or even enjoyably awful in the way of most novelty classics.
I’d give it 2.525 and that’s generous.
Doctor Casino on September 24th, 2006
For god’s sake, couldn’t they have kept the years a little less outlandish? 9595, for Petes sake! Are we really to believe that it’s a millenium between the age when machines do your walking and arm movement for you, and the age when you can pick your children from a long glass tube?? Meanwhile, God “maybe” stops by in the year 7510 and considers the Rapture…but waits until the year 8510 to shake his mighty head or whatever? And it all just kind of stops dead with the year 9595, when we’re “kinda wonderin’ if man is gonna be alive”? It’s just so evident that they picked a bunch of years and randomly assigned them different spooky future things, then ran out of ideas so they filled up a few years with God being perturbed, phrased in different ways. One thing doesn’t lead to another and it all ends vaguely. All in all, totally lazy, which is fatal because the composition never does anything different - not even a “bad trip” futuristic breakdown with primitive synth noises or a theremin or something! If things are going to be this repetitious the lyrics need to be full of twists and clever surprises (see, I don’t know - Trapped In The Closet) and this isn’t cutting it at all. Bad.
Lena on September 25th, 2006
This reminds me of two wholly unrelated things - the first being a piece by Robert Benchley about how one day man will evolve into something more like a catalpa tree, and the late 60s obsession with the population explosion that was to cause nothing but trouble if not outright famine and general chaos. My parents did their bit by only having me…
FT's wwolfe on September 25th, 2006
When I first heard Seals and Crofts several years later, I thought Zager and Evans had made a comeback.
I wonder if the movie “2001″ was an inspiration for this song. If so, I like to imagine Stanley Kubrick tapping his foot to this little number.
As for myself, it’s impossible to think of this song without immediately finding myself awash in memories of my Little League baseball team celebrating its championship, because “2525″ was playing on the jukebox in the restaurant where we had our post-game party. That’s probably not a common response, though.
Dadaismus on September 26th, 2006
This always reminds me of that Daffy Duck cartoon, “Duck Dodgers In the 25th and a Half Century!”, what with the silly years involved 7510 9595 etc, it’s just an extremely silly song. It has the feel of “Hair” about it (a Hairy feeling) which, in itself, was a pretty silly venture. Of course, I do own the “In the Year 2525″ album.
Marcello Carlin on September 26th, 2006
And I own both the Broadway and London Original Cast Recording albums of Hair - the latter featuring Alex Harvey, Ray Russell and various other improv mortgage-payers in the line-up!
FT's Pete Baran on September 26th, 2006
I won’t hear anything against the soundtrack of Hair (unless it is an appreciation of it all being rather hippy and all, which is not really a bad thing, its just a thing). I think the London Cast Recording is better by the way, because it seems to rock out more. Though I would be wary of naked people rocking out quite that much…
Marcello Carlin on September 26th, 2006
Has nobody told you about the Club Poptimism Christmas Special then Pete? ;-)
The Fifth Dimension’s Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In medley (number one in America in ‘69, only number eleven here, tut tut) I frequently think is one of the greatest things ever.
Shame that the Cowsills never caught on in Britain because their individualistic rendition of the title song is quite perversely brilliant.
Dadaismus on September 26th, 2006
I too am, as our American chums would have it, conflicted over “Hair” as I love “Good Morning Starshine” by Oliver, which is undeniably silly
jeff w on September 26th, 2006
Edmundo Ros’s medley “Hare Krishna - Be In” trumps all.
FT's Doctor Mod on September 27th, 2006
A song with no middle eight or bridge (does it even really have a chorus?), weird science, and wacko pseudo-theology as a backlash against The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius.
(Absurdus ad nauseam)
FT's Doctor Mod on September 27th, 2006
But hey–I admit that I still like those showtunes from “Hair.”
geoff on October 13th, 2006
most famous pair of dudes out of seward, nebraska. fact!
Zarathustra Smith on December 13th, 2006
I don’t quite appreciate what is supposed to happen in the titular year itself. At the beginning, they intone “In the year 2525, if man is still alive, if woman can survive, they may find…”
Then they go straight into “in the year 3535″, with its nightmarish vision of pharmaceutical-induced consciousness. The conditional clauses are left dangling. The song’s called In The Year 2525, but makes no mention of what “they may find”.
Al Ewing on April 8th, 2007
Obviously what happens in the year 2525 is a futurescope is invented that allows man to look into all the other future years and see what ‘they may find’ there.
Indy on May 3rd, 2007
Dear All:
Good evening from Canada!!! I hope this finds you and yours well. As for me, I could complain…yadda, yadda, yadda.
Whilst you all are picking “2525″ apart, I do agree with Mr. Ewing in the fact that song is a futurescope that is a crystal ball into our future–into the future of man. This song also carries a warning which we all should heed in these days of global warming. The song carries the line–”We’ve taken all this old Earth can give and never put back nothin’.”
If we don’t want bring around Earth’s early demise, we should put back all that we have taken.
Ind.