THE AGE THAT WILL BURY US (Parody of The Age of Aquarius)

The hip and cool iconic classic from 1967, The Age of Aquarius, sets the stage for this parody called The Age That Will Bury Us. Because the title and lyrics are a bit weighty, though funny too, we left the song “Let the Sun Shine In” at the end of it for a nice pleasant, uplifting ending with some cool images.

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LYRICS TO THE AGE THAT WILL BURY US

Lyrics by Don Caron – Music by Galt MacDermot

When a loon is in the Big White House
And stupider than rocks on Mars
His team will fry the planet
Unless they end up behind bars 

This is the dawning of the Age That Will Bury Us
Age That Will Bury Us
Will bury us
Will bury us

No harmony nor understanding
Sympathy and trust are drowning
Under falsehoods and derisions
Emboldened by extreme divisions
Sadistic distal ruination
And the blind’s new liberation

Will bury us
Will bury us

Let the sun shine
Let the sun shine in
The sunshine in (repeat)

Copyright 2017 Parody Project

We thought you might enjoy comparing the parody lyrics to the original lyrics just for fun. One of the challenges of writing a successful parody is to maintain, as much as possible, the lyrical rhythms of the original – it makes the finished product much more effective – if that can be accomplished. I think our best example of good success with that is “Confounds the Science.” Caron comments that ” I didn’t really set out to bash the president so directly but the unfortunate truth is that “stupider” as the only good replacement I could think of for “Jupiter” so the tone for this parody was set by that reality, or limitations if you will, of the English language.”

LYRICS for AQUARIUS
written for the 1967 musical Hair by James Rado & Gerome Ragni (lyrics), and Galt MacDermot (music)

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius
Aquarius

HISTORY OF THE SOURCE MATERIAL – The Age of Aquarius

“The Age of Aquarius” was originally written for the rock opera Hair and it became an anthem for the cultural and social revolution that was taking place in the late 60s in America. The song reached its pinnacle of success, however, when it was released on an album and as a single by the very popular band of the time, The 5th Dimension.

Bone Howe was the producer for The 5th Dimension and had worked with them on their mega-hit “Up-Up and Away” which was released on their first album in 1967. Howe wasn’t new to the pop/rock music scene, by any means. He had produced other hit songs including “It Ain’t Me Babe” for The Turtles, and “Windy” for the Association. He was in the process of working on the vocal tracks for “Stoned Soud Picnic” (which was their biggest R&B hit) when the group announced to him that they wanted to release a version of “The Age of Aquarius.”

“The thing that bothered me about it was that there’d been other releases of ‘Aquarius,'” said Bones, “and none had done anything, so I was concerned about what we would do that would be any different. I went to see the show and there’s a place where they do “The Flesh Failures” and at the end of the song is just a three bar repeated thing of ‘Let the sunshine in’ where Ragni was swinging across the stage on a chandelier and there was all kinds of craziness going on. That really stayed with me and I came out of the theater saying, I wonder if I could stick that on the end of ‘Aquarius’ and make that the ending. So I went back to the hotel and I called the publisher. I mean you don’t mess with the music from a Broadway show. I started my professional career in 1956 and I knew a lot about what you can and what you can’t do with songs. I said, look the 5th Dimension would like to record ‘Aquarius,’ but I’d like to make it a medley and I’d like to use the last three bars of ‘The Flesh Failures’ and I don’t want to do it without permission. So he said okay, you can go ahead and do it.”

The next problem was to go ahead and do it. “The record was plotted in the fall of ’68 and more or less finished in January of ’69,” Bones said. “I had to do a lot of work with my vocal arranger, Bob Alsivar. Because they couldn’t sing both songs in the same key, we had to do a modulation; we figured out how I was going to do the instrumental arrangement so we could change keys. The record itself is the result of a conglomeration of things.”