Timbuk 3 - The Future's So Bright

Music video by Timbuk 3 performing The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades.

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  Music

[haleyteddy03]

I always think of Kuffs whenever I hear this song.

[clemsonbloke]

I crack up everytime from that line "a peeping tom techy with X-Ray eyes". That is hilarious.

[boppitybipbop]

A later version in "Look's Like Dark For Me" flat out states the message in the lyrics:

Blowin' up the lab,

Blowin' the professor,

Torn between two evils,

I always pick the lesser.

[Robert Bell]

And actually, I have to say, at the time, I was an Engineering student, and my future "was so bright" - and I'm still wearing shades. And yea, $50,000 buys a lot of beer. Particularly back then...

[Robert Bell]

And in some respects, it was. In the 1990's, the economy expanded, and a lot of people made a lot of money. It is only in 2009 that things really went to hell, but even then, the markets have largely recovered. Our future sucks? I don't think so. Depressed people do.

So, I think the song was more of an ironic take on these conspicuous consumption young folks, at the time, who were more interested in money than anything else.

And a lot of people at the time took the song at face value....

[Robert Bell]

I don't think the song was about nuclear war, or the future "sucking". Rather, in the 1980's the Yuppie generation started taking hold. I was in college at the time, and a lot of the young people then weren't protesting or smoking pot, as their parents' generation had, but were rather conformist.

Conspicuous consumption, in the form of designer labels (a new trend) and fancy cars was the norm. These kids really thought their "future was so bright".

[boppitybipbop]

Well the reason the future sucked they got wrong.

[Robert Bell]

I guess you weren't there.

[Jennifer Grzanka]

REAL GENIUS....

[boppitybipbop]

This song actually was apparently a song about the 80's ending in nuclear war, so they did know the future was gonna suck.

[MiniTheCat]

This song always reminds me of the show Head Of The Class.

[DJTMart]

Tommy Boy anyone? :)