One of the bestselling hits of 1969, although it was written five years earlier, was folk rock duo Zager And Evans' pessimistic look into the future, "In The Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)". The duo was Denny Zager (b. 18 February 1944, Wymore, Nebraska, USA; guitar/vocals) and Rick Evans (b. Lincoln, Nebraska, USA; guitar/vocals), who had met in 1962 and joined a band called the Eccentrics. Evans left that band in 1965 but teamed up with Zager again at the end of the decade. The former had written "In The Year 2525" five years earlier, and the newly reunited duo recorded the track in Texas in 1968. It was released on the local Truth label and picked up the following year by RCA Records, climbing to number 1, where it remained for six weeks in the US charts and three weeks in the UK, ultimately selling a reported five million copies.
Unable to follow this success, the duo briefly moved to Vanguard Records before personality clashes led Zager to quit in 1974. Neither he nor Evans were heard of again, although RCA continued to release their recordings for some time in an attempt to make lightning strike twice. Zager became a music teacher while Evans continued to work as a songwriter. "In The Year 2525" remains one of the most irritating songs ever recorded, but it is still regularly played on the radio.
