The 20th Century Is Over
The 20th Century is over, but what if it never began?
What if the entire 100 years was the work of a single man?
I mean in hindsight, dont it seem quite clear?
At least it does from where I sit here
How could we go from a horse-drawn cart
To Mars in 100 years?
He started out slowly, nineteen-ought-one-two-and-three
To pull us in quietly into the 20th Century
But before the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk
Lifted off that sandy ground
Hed invented Thomas Edison, modern medicine, electric sound
The 20th Century is over, but what if it never began?
What if the entire 100 years was the work of a single man?
We chased the War to End All Wars
With a party that roared and crashed
Took a second world war ten years later
Before we found ourselves jobs and gas
And Hitler! Good Lord, Hitler, what was he thinking there?
You put the Devil in a Chaplin moustache
Grease back his crop-top hair and millions will follow
How could we swallow how could we swallow that word for word?
That someone so evil could walk among the people
Who inhabit this planet Earth?
The 20th Century is over, but what if it never began?
What if the entire 100 years was the work of a single man?
The Sixties framed with sex, drugs and rock and roll
Assassinations, demonstrations, and shots from the grassy knoll
He chased away Vietnam with the calm
Of punk rock rage
You never knew what craziness was lying
In wait from page to page
Reganism Communism Reaganism Communism
And they tore down the Berlin Wall
But our optimism is still standing
Waiting for a call that never came
Much is very different, but too much is still the same
He shrank the computer down from a warehouse to a chip
And then he shrunk it down again and again and again and
now its just a tiny blip
And now the blip is so wee, so small it cant be seen
By the naked eye at all
Cant be seen
But it glues us, all of us in our house
To the mouse
To the screen, to the screen
Just like him, in a room thats dim
Were all awaiting our final scene
Were awaiting our final scene
The 20th Century is over, but what if it never began?
What if the entire 100 years was the work of a single man?
Lets override the circuits tonight
And lets write the 21st Century ourselves
Lets get it right