In the Year 2525 - Zager and Evans

[80sChav]

Probably the best song ever this is - how it predicts the future (in certain aspects) and how the video is set out -... particulary with (it looks like Pit Workers) and then Cars going round on Roads above street-Level like is popular in the USA I think , as well too as the words of the song itself - in-fact it's almost spooky when it goes up many years past the year 2525, right up to the year 9595 (which I think none of us will remotely get near to seeing)

It just is too scary for words when reflecting ... but this was the 1960s with great one-offs and whoever created these lyrics and words - let alone Zager and Evans singing it brilliantly - had some vision beyond aprhension in 1969 when this came out. I never saw the advert but someone also created a more updated version in the height of Covid 3 years back - but was more of a Danced-up 1 like Evergreen got turned into after Will Young won Pop Idol .... regardless though it is quite good (but different to Zager and Evans) but still a really really good cover with it jazzed up bordering on a Dance Version - though of course it is'nt that, but just real faster

[George 1978]

Don't forget that the song got into the charts in the same year as Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon - I assume that in 1969 there was a lot of "reverse nostalgia" i.e. looking into the future rather than into the past - looking towards the year 2000 and all that with just over 30 years to go, and well beyond that. The song was, ironically, of its time, with the speculation of what was to come in 50 years, 500 years, 5,000 years and so on, just like the futuristic things were the mai crazes then - this is why we had Tomorrow's World going strong back then. Never liked the song myself as a result. At least Orwell picked a near future year such as 1984, and we had Space 1999 and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I used to joke that there would have been "Zager and Evans featuring the Millennium Bug" with the song: "In the Year 105105" - or In the Year 105-105. And of course, In The Year 1515, doesn't scan with the song. I believe this is still the case, but if one sorted out the acts, groups and singers of British number ones from 1952 onwards into alphabetical order: A1 (ABBA pre-2000) would be first alphabetically, and Zager and Evans would be last.

It reminds me of the question round on either Strike it Lucky or Strike it Rich about One Hit Wonders (acts who had just one number one hit and nothing else in the charts). Zager and Evans was one option and Norman "Spirit in the Sky" Greenbaum (once pronounced Green Bum by a local DJ) was another. The contestant got her words mixed up and answered: "Norman Evans" who was that "over the garden wall" comedian from the mid 20th century, before most people's time, and who inspired a lot of Les Dawson's act.

[80sChav]

Regardless this Song had vision George, but so did many 60s Songs - obviously not as deep as this, but then again the 1960s for My Mum growing up was reversed 30 years later for people of our Generation of the early-ish/mid to late 1990s with Brit-Pop which of course had Pulp and Disco 2000, made in 1995!

[beccabear67]

I remember hearing this song growing up and found it quite unique and even eerie; definitely food for thought compared to many other songs of the time. I've still never heard any other sing by Zager And Evans, if we'd at least owned the single I might've flipped their record over as I often did. The flip to The Cowsills Indian Lake single was something about a sad old man using a newspaper for a blanket on a park bench, and The Beatles' Twist & Shout had There's A Place which I always thought a remarkable song lyrically!

[spuggybridge]

Love the version by Visage...very electronic