History lesson: Future shock ‘In the Year 2525’

While half a million young people attended the Woodstock Music Festival in the summer of 1969, the number one song on the charts that summer – from July to this week (August 22) – wasn’t on the Woodstock playlist. That song was “In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus),” by Denny Zager and Rick Evans.

The song begins, “In the year 2525 / If man is still alive / If woman can survive, they may find …” And then Zager and Evans take listeners to a dystopian future in which humans are zombies who don’t work, think, make choices, or even use their senses – sight, smell, speech – because medical and technological advances have taken over their lives.

In the second verse, the human race is “In the year 3535,” where we, “Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie / Everything you think, do and say / Is in the pill you took today.” A thousand years later, “In the year 4545 / You ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes / You won’t find a thing to chew / Nobody’s gonna look at you.”

And a thousand years after that, “In the year 5555 / Your arms hangin’ limp at your sides / Your legs got nothin’ to do / Some machine’s doin’ that for you.”

And then things get really dystopian. “In the year 6565” the family falls apart because “You won’t 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.”

At which point – it’s the year 7510 – God enters the picture, wondering whether, given the state of things, it’s time for Judgment Day, time to “tear it down and start again,” because mankind has “taken everything this old earth can give / And he ain’t put back nothing.”

The song then enigmatically notes that after 10,000 years, having shed “a billion tears,” man’s reign is over, but … “But through Bruce G. Kauffmann Email author Bruce G. Kauffmann at bruce@history lessons.net. eternal night / The twinkling of starlight / So very far away / Maybe it’s only yesterday.” The song then ends mysteriously by repeating the first verse.

So if, in 1969, millions of people were moved by a song about a world doomed because technology controlled our lives, imagine if the song came out in today’s world, where machines have taken over entire industries, we take pills (legal and illegal) for nearly everything, Google and other search engines, including our user-friendly “Siri” and “Alexa,” answer our questions, tell us where to go, what to do and how to do it, and government agencies such as the FBI, CIA and NSA keep a constant eye on our daily lives.