From Bowie to Busta Rhymes: can pop music really predict the future?

Is there life on Mars? wailed Bowie, slightly prophetically. And is wasn't the last time a song predicted the future


David Bowie had his question- in-a-song-title Life On Mars? almost answered this week, but what other songs have predicted the future with terrifying accuracy?

Ghost Town - The Specials
"This town is coming like a ghost town / All the clubs have been closed down." So sang The Specials in 1981. In the past decade nearly half of all nightclubs in Britain shut their doors.

Video Killed The Radio Star - The Buggles
MTV sure had the lolz when they played this as the opening track for the station's birth, but maybe not so much years later when their programming was reduced to reality shows about teen moms and emo stars' fancy houses. Oh well.

David Bowie, 1973 final show of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Photograph: Chris Walter/WireImage
David Bowie, 1973 final show of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Photograph: Chris Walter/WireImage

Against All Odds - Busta Rhymes
Although Notorious BIG rapped "Time to get paid / Blow up like the World Trade", he was referring to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre. But in 1998, Busta rapped, "The type to fly a plane into your building in the name of Allah." Now that's weird.

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Computer Love - Kraftwerk
"Another lonely night / Stare at the TV screen / I don't know what to do / I need a rendezvous / Computer love." So Kraftwerk basically invented Tinder.

Experiment IV - Kate Bush
Kate Bush's song about a secret military project to create a sound that could kill was released in 1986. Years later Long Range Acoustic Devices have been deployed by US police in various protests, including its inaugural use at G20 protests in Pittsburgh in 2009. But far from being the killer sound Bush talked about, it's more just really loud.

Space Travel Is Boring - Modest Mouse
Was Modest Mouse predicting Nasa's decline in popularity among the American public, with the space-shuttle programme shut down and an overall ebb in prestige with this 1996 track?

People Have The Power - Patti Smith
Every time a group of people come together to change something, Patti Smith is proven right.