In The Year 2525 - Legacy

Legacy

It is unusual for a recording artist to have a number one hit and then never have another chart single. "In the Year 2525" actually gave Zager and Evans this status twice; they remain the only act to do this in both the U.S. and UK singles charts. Their follow up single on RCA-Victor, "Mr. Turnkey" (a song about a rapist who nails his own wrist to the wall as punishment for his crime), failed to hit the main music charts on either side of the Atlantic (although it did manage to make the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart, peaking at #106).

The song has been covered at least 60 times in 7 different languages. A notable version of In the Year 2525 is sung by the Italo-French pop singer, Dalida; another one by the UK new romantic group Visage;another one by Greek singer Takis Antoniadis in the 70s, another version was used as the theme song for the short-lived science fiction series Cleopatra 2525. It is also featured in both parts of the two-part second season finale of Millennium where a man-made virus is threatening to wipe out humanity. The Slovenian industrial group Laibach edited the lyrics in their cover version to make it appropriate for 1994's NATO album. More recently, it was covered by the gothic rock band Fields of the Nephilim, by the electronic body music band Project Pitchfork (album Dhyani, 1991) and by Ian Brown on his 2009 album My Way.

In the 1992 movie Alien 3, a prisoner is heard singing a line or two of the song while scraping the inside of a ventilator shaft, shortly before he is attacked by a juvenile xenomorph and subsequently diced by a large ventilation fan.

The Vietnam war movie 1968 Tunnel Rats uses the song as its opening credits theme.

The comedy film Gentlemen Broncos uses the song during its opening credits and again near the end of the film.

The Futurama episode "The Late Philip J. Fry" uses a parody of the song as three of its main characters travel through the various eras of the future, including the year 252525.