I seem to remember using “online” before using “internet” - probably from 1980 or so.
and “web” was earlier than “internet” too. I belonged to a BBS (modem board) in 1985 called Arachne’s Web - name was a sort of joke on the spider’s kind of web as opposed to the network kind of web.
I’m friends with one of the Lost Dogs, do you want me to ask him?
ETA: On second thought, after reading the lyrics and listening to the song, I don’t think there’s any question they were referring to surfing the net.
Doesn’t fit exactly, and would not be a winner anyway (though earlier than some mentioned) but I remember browsing CD shelves in 1998 and noticing the album called www.thug.com by Trick Daddy and thinking that was the first time a website had been that prominent in the titling of a major song or album, that I was aware of. I do remember buying many CDs before that with enhanced features that mentioned and made use of a band or record label website, used urls on the jacket, etc.
Although it’s been mentioned twice, the date for The Who’s The Relay hasn’t been given. It was 1972. Must be the earliest.
Because before Teh Interwebs, computers and online weren’t sexy (or well-known) enough for most people. Sure, dedicated geeks (I’m included here) were online via BBS and Usenet and so on ages ago, but it wasn’t something most people had much experience with.
There was a lot of reporting in the mid-90s about “the World Wide Web” and “the Information Superhighway” in popular media (which was still basically Time, Newsweek, and other paper magazines, and regular TV news, bless their elderly hearts).
Up to the early 1990s what we now think of as ‘the Internet’ was viewed, at least IME, as more of a set of discrete applications: email, Usenet, FTP, and the like.
What really turned it into a single entity, IMHO, was the web browser.
You can retrofit it with the idea, but the lyrics don’t support it directly. Lyrics.
Spreading the word about revolution was a common notion in 1972, with the 1968 Paris riots close in memory. Doing so electronically wasn’t even futuristic, given modern communications and even music itself. Relays could be computers, but they had a long association with telephones and long-distance dialing. And he was writing all this on synthesizers, which were stand alone.
The Lifehouse project was about a universal spiritual vibe, as I understand it. Computers weren’t part of it. Astrology was. Making it about the Internet today is cheating at best.
Rick Springfield’s “Human Touch” from 1983 starts with the line, “everybody’s talking to computers.”
Kraftwerk, 1981, the entire Computer World album.
Or, more specifically, “Computer Love” from that album:
Another lonely night
Stare at the TV screen
I don’t know what to do
I need a rendezvous
…
I call this number
For a data date
The Lifehouse project was about a futuristic society where most everyone is connected into a government-sponsored grid (Al Gore invented the internet, right? well, the government anyway) via experience suits. Through these experience suits, they experience life indirectly such as people now often do through internet porn and various online entertainment. While the relay could linguistically refer to telephone communications, I think Townshend was referring to sending messages within the grid.
What about Bette Davis and The Balconettes “Shopping on the Internet”?1996 I think? It’s on Youtube.
Warez Døødz - Internet Worms - 1993
Yeah, I remember “warez”, ironically I can’t find the song anywhere…
Just as well I can’t find this either, I can never figure out the lyrics to metal songs anyway.
Think Tank - Hack One (The Internet Worm Mix) 1990
Doesn’t mention the internet in any lyrics, but remixer’s name and obvious Kraftwerk tribute.