Forty years ago this summer, singer songwriter Pat MacDonald released one of the defining pop songs of the 1980s: “The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades,” a song that was inspired by something his then wife and bandmate, Barbara, said to him.
It became a top ten hit, and long after the charts moved on, the phrase "the future's so bright I gotta wear shades" remains in the popular vernacular. And that is really saying something.
Most people heard optimism. But Pat was actually writing ironically about Nuclear anxiety and a generation convinced that technology and ambition might lead somewhere dark.
Ten years ago, I sat down with the Wisconsin songwriter at the little music motel he built in Sturgeon Bay to talk about what happens when a song takes on a life of its own for The Third Story podcast. I wanted to know what it feels like to accidentally write one of those songs that seems to belong to everybody.
He still remembered the moment it happened. Pat recognized that the song had a certain energy without having any idea what its life was going to become. And it was not always an easy ride.
The strange bargain every songwriter makes is that once a song is written, it belongs to the listener as much as it does to the author. Somewhere in the in-between space, hits are born.
Forty years later, “The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades” still gets sung. Usually with a smile. But underneath it is the same uneasy question that inspired it in the first place: What kind of future are we actually creating? The song itself screams 1980s, but the sentiment inside it could be written today.
You can hear my full 2016 Third Story Podcast conversation with Pat MacDonald here.
