Okay. So. I spent years of my life in love with this band, pouring over their song lyrics as a self-proclaimed Joe Girl ™. And I have never stopped puzzling over the conundrum of a song that is “Year 3000.″ For a boy band that sings about love a lot, it feels odd. It stands out.
There are a lot of things about the lyrics that bother me, and I know I’m not alone.
Let’s start here:
1) “everybody bought our seventh album”
Fun!! Cute, for a band at the beginning of their career. Their music lives on through centuries (which, I really hope “Burnin’ Up” does). But now that we are many years PJ (Post Jonas), it is known that they have only released four studio albums: It’s About Time, Jonas Brothers, A Little Bit Longer, and Lines, Vines and Trying Times. The last came out in 2009.
Maybe this means they will have a comeback, but with Joe and Nick having very separate music careers currently, it feels unlikely. Maybe something interfered with the timeline, and the future of “Year 3000″ has been prevented, and we will never see this fun Atlantis world.
I don’t think so, because the song has a lot of other lines that hint otherwise.
Why would their seventh album only be bought by everyone in the year 3000, unless it came out in the year 3000? The song also mentions that they outsold Kelly Clarkson, and the year was full of “boy bands, and another one and another one…and another one!”
Boy bands could be fairly innocuous and endearing to still be a thing 900 years in the future. But Kelly Clarkson?
This brings me to my next point:
2) “Your great great great granddaughter is doing fine”
As one of the most common complaints of this song, I’m sure you’ve all heard “that’s not many generations to last approximately 990 years”
What if the boys Kevin, Nick, and Joe knew that?
This line is telling us that by the time of (and possibly earlier) their audience’s great great great granddaughter, humans have achieved extremely extended longevity, or even practical immortality. Hence the assertion that she is doing fine – the technology is working despite her extreme age.
And if they have the technology for this, then the Jonas Brothers themselves, the other boy bands, and Kelly Clarkson could all exist in this future as products of cloning. That’s why they are relevant and still producing music. The future cloned Jonas Brothers produce three more studio albums, with the third of which (and seventh overall) releasing in the year 3000 and everyone buys it.
I know, you must be thinking “But they would mention if they saw their future cloned selves!”
3) “Not much has changed, but they live underwater”
This line is both ironic, (I’d say living underwater is a big change? Are they in Gungan biodomes or are we all merpeople in 3000???) implying that a lot has changed, and has possible hints in saying “not much has changed.”
Not much has changed because many of the music icons of the early 2000s are STILL THERE!! As clones!! Making new music!!
How would they procure genetic material of the Jonas Brothers in able to clone them nearly a millennia from now, you ask?
Answer: the events of, and very existence of, this song are a fixed point in time.
The popularity of this song into the future created its precedent in the past. Perhaps the “neighbor called Peter” who conveniently knew how to make a time machine was from the Year 3000 originally, and was fated to bring them to the future. Maybe he was stranded in the year 2006 and bringing the Jonas Brothers back with him introduced the people to their music, and the timeline was altered around these events.
Maybe Peter was from our time, but was given assistance with his time machine (as its depicted in the music video as a sort of wormhole rather than a machine) from the future, as the chosen one to fulfill the prophecy. Regardless, the song’s creation inspired the people of the late 2900s to pursue the cloning of early 2000s music icons, a sort of Renaissance (if, in the Renaissance, they could drag Homer into the present and demand he write more epics).
These people in their underwater palaces (likely from global flooding with the melting of the icecaps, let’s be real!!!) said we need the Jonas Brothers and we need them now. And the song told the people who else they needed, the people that the Jonas Brothers saw as clones beside their own clone selves: boy bands and another one…etc. And Kelly Clarkson! (In Kelly Clarkson’s first concert in the year 3000, the audience sings “Since You Been Gone” to her in minor key. That’s a personal belief of mine)
And the song tells us that it is a fixed point, a strange loop with no true point of conception:
“This song had gone multi platinum”
They sing about the song they are singing in the future, meaning they had heard the song they had not yet written? And it described the moment of them hearing it???
But all of these events had to happen, because they had already happened? Seeing the future caused the boys to write the song, and the song’s existence caused the future to bring forth the boys from some strange genetic freezer where they probably keep Walt Disney too.
Conclusion:
It is entirely possible their fifth through seventh albums are not in languages we presently understand, and hold information the human race is not ready for. The 21st century Jonas Brothers were debriefed with this information, and thus split up after their fourth album with the knowledge that their future was secured.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.