assertions in pop songs that were true at the point the song was written/recorded, but are no longer true

Any songs about Pluto being a planet?

Colin Matthews' Plutothe Renewer, is, ironically, out of date

(xp) "Solar System" by the Beach Boys.

Any songs about Pluto being a planet?

very much enjoyed Frank Zappa's "Rabbit Tests are How We Determine if Women are Pregnant and There Will Never Be another Way"

lmao

Young MC:
"A movie's showing
so you're going
could care less about the $5 you're blowing"

TMBG's cover of an educational number from Hy Zaret's 'Space Songs':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjRx3o-BYZ4

But they did the honourable thing and updated it some years later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLkGSV9WDMA

I thought it was cool how that wound up on their science-themed album, just to give a real example of how science updates our understanding of the universe over time

e.g. "Reagan's president elect" from '(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang' by Heaven 17 - this was true from 4th of November 1980 until 20th of January 1981

― Platinum Penguin Pavilion (soref), Saturday, 8 June 2024 21:22 (two days ago) link

Whooooa, had not opened the thread yet but this just popped up on shuffle so I clicked through. Serendipity!

This phenomenon in general reminds me of my family's hilarious attempt to play a hopelessly out-of-date edition of Trivial Pursuit from the '80s that had been stuck in a closet at my mom's house for forever. The correct answer to every other question was basically 'N/A'.

Eminem's famous "Without Me" Moby zing "Nobody listens to techno"

Assertions in pop songs that have fluctuated between being true and not true and may also depend on what economist you talk to:

Stock market going up
Jobs going down
Ain't no funky job to be found

"Funky President (People It's Bad)" by James Brown

I thought still referring to him as a techno artist in 2002 was meant to belittling in the same way calling George Michael a boyband guy might be be

Fleetwood Mac - "Never Going Back Again"

And of course the famous Dr. Dre line

I still express, yo I don't smoke weed or sess
Cause it's known to give a brother brain damage
And brain damage on the mic don't manage nothing
But making a sucker and you equal, don't be another sequel

Paul Hardcastle, "19":

"They fought the longest war in American history"

:(

Any songs about Pluto being a planet?

Holst’s The Planets ?
― Are you addicted to struggling with your horse? (Boring, Maryland), Monday, June 10, 2024 4:42 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nope, Pluto hadn't been discovered when he wrote it.

Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel, "The Throne of Agony"

"Yeah, I'm the one who gave the sandwich to Mama Cass"

In reality, "Mama" Cass Elliot died in her sleep of natural causes on the night of July 29, 1974. According to Lindsay Zoldaz in The New York Times in 2024, this "cartoonish rumor — propagated in endless pop culture references, from Austin Powers to Lost — cast a tawdry light over Elliot’s legacy and still threatens to overshadow her mighty, underappreciated talent." In 2020, a journalist and friend of Elliot's, Sue Cameron, publicly admitted that she promulgated the false ham sandwich story by writing it into Elliot's obituary for The Hollywood Reporter. She claimed she was asked to print the lie by Elliot's manager Allan Carr, who decided that the humiliating falsehood was preferable to any implication that Elliot's death was associated with substance abuse.

Doesn’t really qualify for the first part of thread title then

Couldn't find a Mamas & Papas example, this was the next best thing

every song on jay-z’s the black album where he says he’s retiring from rap

Weird Al’s “I Lost on Jeopardy” refers to Art Fleming as the host

― frogbs

jeopardy ended in 1975, there was a brief '78-'79 revival with fleming as the host but don pardo didn't announce - yankovic specifically calls out pardo as the announcer, so it wasn't true even as of the time of the recording

“Cig Machine” by The Suburbs (1980)

I'm 22 now
And I got a nice cock

Half of that may still be true, I’d have no way of knowing.

― Overly dramatic elevator music (Dan Peterson)

if only i'd written some songs about my cock

Is the song set in 2001?
Also the cigarettes were unlit - important for comparative purposes.

― assert (matttkkkk)

was played as early as 2000 iirc

very much enjoyed Frank Zappa's "Rabbit Tests are How We Determine if Women are Pregnant and There Will Never Be another Way"

― Iacocca Cola (Neanderthal)

wow you made it to side five of that record, huh?

Assertions in pop songs that have fluctuated between being true and not true and may also depend on what economist you talk to:

― Josefa

schroedinger's pop song

i feel like this thread has real potential, but most everything posted is like "details that are now outdated" -- which is like most music with lyrics? factual assertions that are no longer true is a more interesting idea

― budo jeru

see a lot of science stuff is tricky because it's like

you know, all those songs about neutron bombs, like "kill the poor", it's based on an urban legend about the nature of the neutron bomb. far more common to have songs that were _widely believed to be true_ rather than things that were actually true at the time and now false.

"God Save the Queen"

assertions in pop songs that were not true at the point the song was written/recorded, but are now true

"she ain't no human being"

it unfortunately appears that Flynt Flossy is no longer "known across the nation"

how do people feel about artists updating the lyrics of these songs to keep up with the times? e.g. there was a Rapino Brothers remix of Fascist Groove Thing in 1993 that changed the words to "Democrats are back in power/Across that great wide ocean/Bush has proved you can't elect/Fascist god in motion". I remember Damon Albarn started singing "Love in the 90s/WAS paranoid" when Blur played Girls & Boys post y2k, don't know if he still does that.

U2 - Miami:

Got the sun got the sand
Got the batteries... in the handy cam

...

No big deal we know the score
Just back from the video store

BTW "dated" lyrics like these are so endearing to me. I do kinda want a song to be stuck in the week and location it was written etc. etc.

assertions in pop songs that were not true at the point the song was written/recorded, but are now true

"she ain't no human being"

― peace, man, Friday, 14 June 2024 16:05 (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

double negative pedantry to go here

She certainly has no future now, apart from the getting eaten by worms bit

U2 - Miami:

Got the sun got the sand
Got the batteries... in the _handy cam_

...

No big deal we know the score
Just back from the _video store_

Paul McCartney can no longer go back to the USSR.

how do people feel about artists updating the lyrics of these songs to keep up with the times? e.g. there was a Rapino Brothers remix of Fascist Groove Thing in 1993 that changed the words to "Democrats are back in power/Across that great wide ocean/Bush has proved you can't elect/Fascist god in motion". I remember Damon Albarn started singing "Love in the 90s/WAS paranoid" when Blur played Girls & Boys post y2k, don't know if he still does that.

― Platinum Penguin Pavilion (soref), Friday, June 14, 2024 11:26 AM bookmarkflaglink

I did appreciate when Pearl Jam went on tour in 2000 and Vedder changed one lyric of "Do the Evolution" to "I'm George Bush and my son is an ass"

BTW "dated" lyrics like these are so endearing to me. I do kinda want a song to be stuck in the week and location it was written etc. etc.

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Friday, June 14, 2024 11:27 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

My favorite part of that Fred Armisen/Dave Grohl "old punks reunite at a wedding" SNL sketch is when Armisen says something like, "Take that, Alexander Haig," which I imagine was either consciously or unconsciously inspired by Dead Kennedys "We've Got a Bigger Problem Now"

that sketch was gold

the whole of Making Plans for Nigel. and not just because of British Steel - ignoring another unrelated company of that name now apparently - but just generally the idea that Nige's parents think that he'll be sorted for life if he's set up in the trade, no?

the toy dolls have that one song about 'when you're jimmy s*ville, everybody thinks you're brill'

Tupac "We ain't ready to have a black president"

The Fall updated "US 80s-90s" when done live post-1989 to "US 90s 00000000s". I can't seem to find the version I'm thinking of, though.

I guess when they broke up, that was the day Chumbawamba got knocked down and they did not get up again.

Oh I have one: Sleeper "Best of luck Mr Gorski"

Which turned out to be an urban legend ie untrue.

Does that count?

Toby Keith said in “American ride” that the plasma screen tvs were getting bigger but I don’t think that’s true anymore and I haven’t heard tv screens described as “plasma” for quite some time

Frazier Chorus - Little Chef :((

Like the 'Wambas mentioned above, it was sad when Carter's Machine stopped

"Take that, Alexander Haig,"

Jello did California Uber Alles with Dillinger Escape Plan last weekend at an LA punk festival, with "updated" lyrics about Governer Schwarzeneggar. might be time to update them again?

Yeah, that was from the 2nd Jello/Melvins album in 2005…

https://i.discogs.com/s8tj2YHCmRlr7tn1lTRUsFxu8CgLdoIpkZQJT9k_bqs/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:528/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI0NzEx/MS0xNTIwNDQ5NjU0/LTk2MjQuanBlZw.jpegaki onda - precious moments - bucolic bittersweet concrete

wrong thread, innit

Re the opening post, Fascist Groove Thang was released in March 1981, by which time the "Reagan's President Elect" line was already out of date