Before the advent of thrash and death metal, some everyday-style pop songs confronted the idea of The End of All Things. Here are a few of them, selected for amusement or bemusement value:
- · The 1954 “Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream)" is not really about The End of the World as We Know It, but was inspired that way. The song’s writers were sitting around in a car listening to the radio when a newscaster announced the first successful H-bomb test. A discussion followed about what kind of sound the thing might make. “Sh-Boom” was suggested, and from there, talk segued into writing a song about a girl’s big impact on some poor guy.
- ·
In
Eddie Hill’s 1959 song “Monkey Business,” male and female research Astro-chimps
(from the USA and USSR respectively) watch from the Moon as mankind bombs
himself back to the Stone Age. The
chimps decide to go back to Earth and start the evolutionary ladder again.
- ·
In
the 1966 song “The Year 2000,” by Estelle Bennett (also a member of the
Ronettes), the planet Earth is now completely at peace, because everybody is
dead, through war. No more wars, no more hunger, all is now at peace.
- ·
In
1961, Sammy Salvo expressed the atomic angst of several generation in his song
about how “A Mushroom Cloud” overshadowed his every attempt at happiness.
- ·
The
Shirelles in 1964 internalized the end of a love affair as “Doomsday,” listing
many familiar end-of-life scenarios in this doo-woop song. "Surely the end will come, I thought it
would be an atomic bomb, but if you should take your love away. Doomsday."
- ·
Simon
& Garfunkel’s 1964 album Wednesday Morning Three AM includes
a slice-of-life song, “The Sun Is Burning,” where everyday life continues as
normal until suddenly there are two suns in the sky—one a nuclear fireball.
- ·
“The
Cave,” by Johnny Paycheck, made it to Number 32 on 1967’s Billboard Country
Chart. It’s a first-person tale of a
fellow who goes spelunking, experiences an earthquake, and comes out to find
himself the only person alive after a nuclear exchange.
- ·
“Wooden
Ships,” from the 1969 album Crosby, Stills & Nash depicts an
encounter between soldiers of opposing armies who aren’t sure which side—if any—won
the war. They then share survival tips and join forces.
- ·
Dennis
Zager and Richard Evans’s more familiar “In the Year 2525” (1969) has become a
staple of oldies radio, describing possible changes to humanity and ending up
wondering if the Lord will just get tired of Man and say, “I guess it’s time
for the Judgment Day.”
