Welcome to the year 2025.
For those of us old enough to remember the summer of ’69 – maybe we got our first real six-string – we know we only have exactly five centuries to go until the year 2525 – the prophetic first year in the one-hit wonder song by Zager & Evans, “In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus).” It was Billboard’s No. 1 song in the U.S. for six weeks during that summer, and went on to become the Record of the Year.
Like Bryan Adams, who wrote the summer of ’69 were the best days of his life, it is possible to look back on 1969 with cheer.
Certainly there were positive things that happened. Apollo 11 landed on the moon. John Madden was named head coach of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders. The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held in upstate New York. Both “The Brady Bunch” and “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” premiered on TV.
But, there are plenty who look back on those days with despair. Although the U.S.-North Vietnamese peace talks had begun in Paris, the Vietnam War raged on, filling the nightly news broadcasts with images of death and destruction. The Beatles give their last public performance on the roof of Apple Records in London. Mickey Mantle announced his retirement from professional baseball. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire.
And depending on your point of view, “In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)” is released and becomes the No. 1 song in America. The song chronicles our human journey through 10,000 years of time, making futuristic predictions that ended with “man’s reign is through.”
It’s been 56 years since that song was a hit, and I think Zager & Evans may have wildly overestimated how long it might take for some of their predictions to become reality.
The song predicts that in the year 3535, “everything you think, do and say is in the pill you took today.” With the plethora of medications we have available to help us mentally and physically, many of us are already taking daily pills so that we can think, do and say.
In the year 4545 Zager & Evans envisage that, “You ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes. You won’t find a thing to chew.” We’re not quite to this prediction yet in that most of our food still requires chewing – the health-craze smoothie movement aside – but, medical advances do allow us to feed people who are unable to digest food normally without them needing to chew.
As for needing our eyes, that might still be a few thousand years off.
However, in the year 5555 they foresee that your arms will hang limp at your side and you won’t need your legs because, “some machine’s doing that for you.”
If we’re paying attention to the commercials on TV, it seems that we’ve already progressed to where the main function of our arms and legs is to workout at the gym or engage in some other form of exercise – walking, running, hiking, swimming, etc.
We’ve got self-driving cars, robot vacuums, voice-activated appliances and phones – all doing whatever they do for us without using our arms and legs. “Hands-free” is a selling point for many products.
Then, in the year 6565 Zager & Evans prophesied that, “You won’t need no husband, won’t need no wife,” because you’ll pick your son or daughter, ”from the bottom of a long glass tube.”
In-vitro fertilization was pioneered in the 1970s – less than 10 years after this song was released – and has given millions of people the opportunity to become parents who otherwise could not. Test tube babies didn’t take anywhere near the 4,500 years they thought to become reality.
The song then takes a religious turn and invokes God for the years 7510 and 8510. The lyrics state that in the year 7510 God may say, “Guess it’s time for the judgment day,” and in the year 8510 God will “either say I’m pleased where man has been, or tear it down, and start again.”
While some believe Nostradamus predicted that the world would end this year in 2025, the song does take a positive turn in the year 8510 and suggests the possibility that God will be pleased where man has been and not tear it down.
Then, in the year 9595, Zager & Evans go back to despair, guess whether, “man is gonna be alive,” and suggest that, “He’s taken everything this old earth can give, and he ain’t put back nothing.” That’s a good reminder for all of us whether we’re in the year 2025 or 9595.
Finally, after 10,000 years, the song predicts, “man’s reign is through.”
As I said, it seems that in the mere 56 years since that song was a hit, in many instances we’ve already leaped thousands of years ahead of those predictions. We can only hope that the “10,000 year” prediction of man’s reign is one that doesn’t happen thousands of years early. Or ever.
