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Zager and Evans - In the Year 2525

"In The Year 2525" is a song by Zager and Evans released in 1969. Rick Evans wrote and

composed the song. This song emerged at the top of Billboard Top 100.

The song start from the verse "In the year 2525 if man is still alive, if women can survive

they may find", this one verse gives off the idea of what this song will be about. In this song the

future is predicted based on the understanding of technology and human nature.

In the first verse the song makes something very clear "If man is still alive", this means

that they are expecting that mankind might end before 2525, this was majorly because of the

creation of Atomic Bomb. Richard Feynman a theoretical physicist, who worked on the first

atomic bomb, in his book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! talks about the day when the first

Atomic bomb was tested.

He says in his book that while all of us were celebrating just after the first successful

experiment we saw a peer sitting in a corner crying, he though we had created a terrible thing (1).

Looking at the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we are left with no doubt that he was can

certainly say that he was right.

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On the next part of verse "if women can survive" this can be interpreted in many ways the

exact reason can be difficult to pin point, it may be due to the abuse toward women in general.

One thing we can see for sure is that the author of the song and the singer both had very strong

feeling toward protection and rights of women.

In the next verse of the song time is fast forward a 1010 years and it is now the year 3535

in this time the song predicts "In the year 3535 ain't gonna need the tell the truth... tell no lies,

everything you think do and say is in the pill you took today", we see somewhat of an implication

of this idea in the movie Equilibrium where everyone is forced by the government to take a pill

regularly that kills all emotions and thus no lies exist in the world everything is reduced to

simple logic, no place exists for lies in that logic .

The world is moving toward a time of technology when we are being watched 24 hours

through our cell phone networks, search engines and browsers that are always tracking us thus no

one can lie about his whereabouts as all the places he has been to are recorded by the cellular

companies.

The song jumps approximately another 1000 years to the year 4545. The picture of this

point in time is described as "In the year 4545 ain't gonna need your teeth nor your eyes, you

won't find a thing to chew, nobody's gonna look at you". This beautifully explains some of the

phenomena's happening even today like everybody is busy with there life and no one has the

time to stop and look around them.

W. H. Davies in his poem Leisure said "What is this life if full of care, we have no time to

stand and stare". Autor of this song may have the same idea that as the life goes on it will get

busier and busier until no one has time for anyone and see that to be true in the present time.
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As for the part about the teeth it is possible that with the invention of space food that was

mainly semiliquid the author of the song saw it saw it as the food of future. No teeths are

required when nothing hard enough to bite exists.

Further in the song the time depicted is 5555 in this time arms are nothing but useless

limbs hanging on the sides and no required from our legs everything is done by robots. This is

very beautiful and frightening depiction of the future that may even become true in our life.

More and more work today is being done by automated machine and human interference is

constantly being reduced in delicate and no so delicate industries alike.

Instead of playing an actual game we prefer video games, we prefer to use our car instead

of walking even if the distance we have to travel is just a block.

The song move yet another 1000 years to the year 6565 the picture depicted in this time

can easily be summed up into "Designer Babies". The song says that in this time people won’t

need to marry and they can choose their babies form a test tube. This is something very amazing,

awesome and a little bit of scary to see that how accurately the writer foresaw the future.

Moving on to year 7510 we see a demand that if God is ever going to come then this is

the time for Him to show himself. The reason given is that if He comes down and takes a look

around He himself might think that now is the time for judgment day. We can make a clear

picture using the previous patterns of this song that by time we as human beings would have lost

our humanity. This would the perfect time for God to come down and take a lot around for the

final evaluation of what humans have made of themselves.

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The song then jumps another 1000 years to 8510. God is going to make his final decision,

if the humans are able to please him with their achievements then He might leave them if not

then it the end of the world and beginning of a new one from scratch.

Going another 1000 year into the future this song indicates that the exitance of Man in

that time is very uncertain. He has already taken everything this old can give, he has exhausted

every resource Earth provided him with and now there is nothing left on the planet to support

life. The main cause of this is Man himself he took everything out form the Earth and he put

nothing back. This is something of utmost importance this is also happening today. We are going

to exhaust our resources soon. We have polluted our water, have derived thousands of species to

extinction and inevitably we are moving toward extinction ourselves.

The song ends in the next verse with an important message, after 10,000 years Man is

going to realize his mistake and will shed a thousand tears but there will be no going back his

time on Earth had ended.

The most baffling part is the last part the verse which say that if we look at all these year

from the perspective of our universe, all 10,000 years, all the sufferings, all the happiness, all the

pains, all the wars, it was nothing more then a day in the eye of Universe. All that came and all

that will come until the world ends is just a blink compared to the age of our Universe.

Now to summarize it all this song is about the years to come. Looking at the situation
humans are now in the author of this song predicts the future accurately. Many situations that he
described in his song are true today and most definitely will be true in the days to come.
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Works Cited

Richard Fynamn. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!. 1985

W. H. Davies. "Leisure". Songs Of Joy and Others. 1911

Zager and Evans. In the Year 2525. 1969

Kurt Wimmer. Equilibrium. 2002

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designer_baby