March 6th, 2007
13. RJD2, "1976" (available on Since We Last Spoke)
If our bicentennial year had a theme song, how might it sound? Maybe something like RJD2's wiggy turntablist ode to his birth year, which combines disco rhythms and cop-show soundtrack horns. It's exciting, kitschy, funky, and a little dark. It's 1976.
14. The Clash, "1977" (available on Super Black Market Clash)
By the end of the '70s, people were already romanticizing the rock 'n' roll era that had just passed, but The Clash shouted them down in this tight little punk single. "No Elvis, Beatles, or The Rolling Stones!", Joe Strummer yelps over Mick Jones' buzzsaw guitar, urging listeners to pay heed to what's happening right now. Ironically, "1977" later became an anthem to those who wish rock 'n' roll could get back to where it was 30 years ago.
15. Smashing Pumpkins, "1979" (available on Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness)
It's hard to hear this shimmering, catchy hit single from Smashing Pumpkins' overstuffed double CD without thinking about its poignant video, which features shaggy-haired kids wreaking havoc in suburbia. But that feeling is present in the song too. Billy Corgan's rubbery guitar and whispery vocals don't sound like anything that would've been on the radio in 1979, but the imagery of empty streets and vacant cement lots captures the feeling of being out after dark in a world that the teens of the late '70s never made.
16. David Bowie, "1984" (available on Diamond Dogs)
David Bowie's 1974 album Diamond Dogs features plenty of highlights, but "1984" isn't exactly one of them. Coming on like a clunky fusion of "Theme From Shaft" and "Aquarius," the song was originally intended for a musical based on George Orwell's novel, before Orwell's widow denied Bowie the rights. Good thing, too: As it stands, "1984" is a hysterical vision of the future, rife with mind-blowing predictions like "They'll split your pretty cranium and fill it full of air / And tell you that you're 80, but brother, you won't care." Little did Bowie know then that one of the most terrifying things to happen in 1984 would be the release of his album Tonight.
17. Paul McCartney & Wings, "Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five" (available on Band On The Run)
The man of a thousand voices appears in the smarmy vocal guise of a carnival barker on "Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five," a nervous little funhouse jam that alternates between a darkly descending, Great Depression-style piano riff, and an ethereal bridge packed with enough harmonies to give E.L.O. a run for its bell-bottoms. It's a strange track: After conjuring up an appropriately frightening image for the Orwell-plus-one era in the opening line, "No one ever left alive in Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five," sappy Paul actually fuses love lyrics onto the mean-sounding melody. None of the women in the future, he suggests, could ever replace his beloved Linda. Judging by his recent divorce from Heather Mills, he was right.
18. Bowling For Soup, "1985" (available on A Hangover You Don't Deserve)
Another "year" song that waxes wistful about the past at the expense of the present. "When did Mötley Crüe become classic rock?" whines Jaret Reddick over one of the lamest riffs nü-punk ever produced. The answer: At precisely the same moment that people started thinking Bowling For Soup sounded good.
19. Clem Snide, "1989" (available on Your Favorite Music)
Spinning pop culture into wistful little diamonds is one of Clem Snide's slam-dunk tricks, and this beautifully somber gem jokingly paraphrases Prince's "1999" without ever threatening to actually par-tay. Sure, there appears to be a gathering, but mournful strings accompany the thought "You were hoping that a party would break the silence of this room / With laughs." Alas, it never happens. But the world does get another lovely song out of Eef Barzelay's melancholy.
20. Prince, "1999" (available on 1999)
It seems quaint now, but the year 1999 was once so amazingly far off that it was an easy shorthand reference for a time when we'd all be flying around with jetpacks, or even more drastically, waiting for the end of the world. The children of the '80s lived in terror of nuclear war, and that feeling that Armageddon was just around the corner became pervasive in pop culture. Prince took on the topic several times, sometimes with an earnest, stop-the-madness angle on songs like "Ronnie, Talk To Russia." But his 1982 hit "1999" just shrugs its shoulders. Faced with the purple skies of judgment day, he figures there's no point in doing anything but dancing: "Life is just a party, and parties weren't meant 2 last."
21. Pulp, "Disco 2000" (available on Different Class)Only Jarvis Cocker could turn fond memories of a grammar-school classmate into a sexual come-on. In this gleefully sleazy song from Pulp's breakthrough album, Cocker gets all misty singing to "Deborah" about how everyone said they could've been "brother and sister," and how they promised themselves they'd marry each other one day—if they were both single in the year 2000. Well, guess what date's fast approaching, Deborah? After pausing to remember that she was "the first girl at school to get breasts," Cocker asks Deborah if they could meet on Sunday. "You could even bring your baby," he moans, desperate to find the words that will get her into bed at last.
22. Prefab Sprout, "Carnival 2000" (available on Jordan: The Comeback)
Call it pre-millennial tension, but there sure were a lot of songs about the year 2000 as it drew near. Prefab Sprout's "Carnival 2000"—recorded in 1990—is one of the sweetest. It's a hopeful piece of light pop-tropicalia, with breezy lyrics about raising a glass to absent friends, and the cool music we'll be listening to on the night we celebrate the ultimate New Year. "Lives come and go / But life, no denial / is always in style," Paddy McAloon sings, dispensing with nostalgia in favor of optimism.
23. Rush, "2112" (available on 2112)
It's hard to gauge what's weirder: A hard-rock-turned-prog band writing a 20-minute science-fiction song about a theocratic dystopia, or said band dedicating said song to Ayn Rand, who no doubt would have screamed in horror had she heard it. Stranger still, "2112," which consumes the entire first half of Rush's 1976 opus, actually sounds good—scratch that, great—in 2007. Or maybe Coheed And Cambria just makes it seem so by comparison.
24. Zager & Evans, "In The Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)" (available on Billboard Top Pop Hits: 1969)
Prince saw the human race ending with a bang, but Nebraska duo Zager & Evans think we're more likely to die out with a drawn-out whimper that takes millennia to unfold, as we slowly turn into machine-assisted blobs that suck the Earth dry and are eventually wiped out by God. It's the most lackadaisical apocalypse ever put to song. The future also wasn't too kind to Zager & Evans, who never had another hit. And though "In The Year 2525" was a number-one single for six weeks in 1969, its gravely overblown, doom-laden imagery (not to mention that ludicrous subtitle) made it almost instantly dated, doomed to live on mainly in derisive jokes by the likes of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew.
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