Poetry Corner: Rick Evans

The only song to be a one-hit wonder in both the U.S. and the U.K.

In 1969, the United States put a man on the moon. The United States was also mired in a war in Vietnam, the purpose of which almost nobody understood -- and which even today is unclear.

On the day that a human first walked on the surface of the moon, the top hit on the Billboard chart was "In the Year 2525," the only hit ever recorded by the duo Zager and Evans.

It captures the pessimism of the times, the worry that humans might be on a course where technology changes all that is human about them -- robots, genetic engineering, ideas that were science fiction in 1969.

I would hope that today we have moved beyond that sort of vision, although certainly some of the technologies envisioned have come true far sooner than the song lyrics predicted.

In The Year 2525 lyrics

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find

In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today

In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing chew
Nobody's gonna look at you

In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got not nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you

In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube

In the year 7510
If God's a-comin' he ought to make it by then
Maybe he'll look around himself and say
Guess it's time for the Judgement day

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head
He'll either say I'm pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again

In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing

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 the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find

In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do or say
Is in the pill you took today ....(fading...) 

Thanks to elyrics.net for the words.