In the Year 2525

"In the Year 2525" is a song about the journey of mankind over a 7,000-year span: 2525, 3535, 4545, 5555, 6565, 7510, 8510, and 9595. It predicts that humanity's thoughts, relationships and bodies will be negatively impacted by technological advances and ends with mankind's extinction.^[9]

The song was produced by Tommy Allsup. Allsup played lead guitar as a member of Buddy Holly's band The Crickets. While touring in 1959 with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, he lost a fateful coin toss with Valens for a seat on the plane that crashed, killing Valens, Holly, Richardson, and pilot Roger Peterson on February 3, 1959 (The Day the Music Died).

The song was recorded in 1968, at a studio in a cow pasture in Odessa, Texas.^[10]

Famously, the song made Zager and Evans the ultimate one-hit wonders; for many years, the Nebraska duo were the only artist to hit the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic—and never had another hit on Billboard's chart nor in Britain. (The Canadian group Magic! later had a number one in both the US and the UK with "Rude" in 2014, but have not had a hit record outside of Canada since.)

The song has been covered at least 60 times in seven languages, including a Jewish parody recorded by Country Yossi, and an Italian cover by Caterina Caselli titled "Nel 2023".^[13] Zager and Evans themselves also recorded an Italian version of the song, instead called "Nell'Anno 2033".^[14][15]

Zager and Evans themselves referred to "2525" in one of their later songs, "Yeah 3²" (1970): "I'm gonna call it "In The Year 2525", or something like that/And if it sells, then I'll do well, gonna pay this woman back".

It was included in a Clear Channel memorandum, distributed by Clear Channel Communications to every radio station owned by the company, which contained 165 songs considered to be "lyrically questionable" following the September 11, 2001, attacks.^[16]

Two lines of the song are sung by the inmate Murphy in the 1992 film Alien 3 immediately prior to his death.

Brief snippets are played in "The Time Is Now", the second-season finale of the TV show Millennium, which depicts an apocalyptic event.

The song was rewritten and used as the introductory theme for the 2000 TV series Cleopatra 2525.

In 2010, it was parodied as "In the Year 252525" in the seventh episode of Futurama's sixth season, "The Late Philip J. Fry", as Fry, Professor Farnsworth and Bender travel forwards through time to find a period in which the backwards time machine has been invented.^[17]

The song acts as an aesthetic theme to the film Gentlemen Broncos.^[18]

The BBC Radio series 2525, a sketch show set in that year, featured a cover of the song with its first lyric as its introductory theme.^{[citation needed][19]}

The first few verses of the song are used as the opening theme while the credits roll in the 2006 film Tunnel Rats.

Zager once said that a Time magazine cover from 1969 featured him and Evans with the caption "Even The Beatles would be jealous." However, no cover of the duo is included in Time's magazine history for 1969.^[20][21]

• 26th century
• Brave New World
• Dystopia
• Human extinction
• Human impact on the environment
• Anthropocene
• List of one-hit wonders on the UK Singles Chart
• List of one-hit wonders in the United States