Songs that mention dates that can change the interpretation

Cafe Society
1

A a spin-off, and attempt not to hijack this thread, I thought this would be interesting…

Some songs mention the current date in the lyrics, therefor dating themselves pretty easily.

Other songs mention past or future dates, and thus the interpretation of a line can be changed by whether or not you put it into its original time context, or the current one…

In that thread, Love Potion No. 9 is mentioned, where the narrator mentions he hasn’t had a date since 1956 - in 1959, he was lonely…in 2008, well…Let’s assume he was married for at least 30 or 40 of those years, so he doesn’t come across quite so pathetically?

As is Prince’s 1999 - The title just doesn’t carry the same implications it used to…

Which prompted me to think of the Stray Cats’ Rock This Town, where the narrator mentions almost getting into a fight with someone who he describes as ‘a real square cat’ who ‘looks like 1974’… Which, again, doesn’t play quite the same in 2008 as in 1981.

He also mentions going to a place that only has disco in the jukebox, which gives a completely different view of what the place is like now than then, too.

I think a special mention has to go to Flight of the Conchords’ Robots (AKA, The Humans Are Dead), where the joke about being from the ‘Distant future - the year 2000’ is a LOT funnier in 2008 than it was when it was released in 1998…and it was funny then. But being a deliberate joke from the start disqualifies it from SERIOUS placement in this thread…

So…who has any other examples?

2

How did he get married without having a date? Mail order bride? Because that would be even more pathetic than not getting a date for fifty years. I think.

3

Well, if you assume the last girl he dated in '56 married him…they divorce in the 90s, to give a few good years for him to realize he’s not having the same success he was when he was a kid…and he can attribute it to the fact it’s been 50-odd years since he’s tried this dating thing.

4

The Summer of 69.

5

Especially as Bryan Adams was 9 years old that summer.

6

That’s supposed to refer to a date?

Huh. Learn something new every day. :smiley:

7

ABBA’s “Happy New Year”

Who knows what’s waiting down the line
At the end of 89?

I’ll worry about the end of 2009. I won’t even be here at the end of 2089 and even if I were, I’m not thinking about it now.

8

In the Year 2525 is just as topical now as it was in 1969.

9

I was talking to a Navy guy once. He mentioned that he was out at sea for months at a time. I said that must be hard on relationships, and he told me he hadn’t had sex since 1956. A look of surprise must have crossed my face, then he looked at his watch and said “hell, it’s only 2200, now.”

Tell me more.

10

“The Way Life’s Meant To Be” by ELO from the album “Time.”

“With its [something] towers and plastic flowers/I wish I was back in 1981.”

11

“We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969” seemed like it had been a long time in 1976. Now in 2008…

12

I heard that as a joke, which interestingly enough changes with the year.

13

The distant future…the year 2000.

14

Laughing into 1939 - Al Stewart.
This song takes place in Europe on New Year’s Eve 1939. With the party in full swing, a young man looks forward to kissing the girl who has been leading him on “Under a mistletoe moon;” the royals come out onto the palace balcony, and the crowd goes wild, nobody suspecting that in 9 months time they will be plunged into a years’ long holocaust of unimaginable proportions, after which the world will never be the same again.

15

What I meant to mention. btw, what was in the air…marijuana smoke or cicada sounds?

Love, Phil

16

Heading for the 90’s
living in the wild wild west…

17

A 20th-Century Boy is an old-fashioned kind of guy.
Livin’ in the '80s would be kind of said.