Back to the Future Song


This is to be sung to the tune of Gulf War Song by Moxy Früvous, or some approximation of it. While writing it I forgot how much the tune varied, and got stresses and extra syllables in all sorts of wrong places while thinking of similar tunes in other parts of the song. It’s NaPoWriMo’s fault I’m blogging it in this condition. Luckily, I have a time machine, so I can go back and fix it later without worrying about messing anything up.

He made a car
that goes through time
with the fuel that he stole
when it hits eighty-eight miles an hour.
He nearly died.
The kid messed up.
Then they botched three more Times
and to fix things they needed more power.

What kind of klutz tears the space-time continuum,
And assumes that the remedy’s to keep on changing time?
He’s just a h0ver boi.
Doc’s just a drag racer.
If they killed their own forebears, would it still be a crime?

Fighters to change the past.
Fighters to get back.
Fighters for hoverboards, peace and a jet pack.
Don’t you insult this guy ’cause he’s Marty McFly,
and history seems to agree
to be what he says to be.

They went back, then back forward,
and the bullies all got their dues,
and it worked out just fine for ‘the good guys’.
Who was hurt? Who’s erased?
Were the the questions unasked.
Did a hurricane start with his Levi’s?

What could they do? He’s just Doc Brown, and not The Doctor.
They couldn’t track each wingbeat of every butterfly.
Don’t think it helps to say, ‘think, McFly, think’ again.
They’ve ways to make history; how could they not try?

Fighters to fix the past.
Fighters to get back.
Fighters for hoverboards, peace and a jet pack.
Don’t you insult this guy ’cause he’s Marty McFly,
and history seems to agree
to be what he says to be.
To heck with causality.

He’s just an underdog.
Doc’s just a scientist.
Time travel’s ‘heavy’, not light at c.
What could they do? He’s just Doc Brown, and not The Doctor.
And history seems to agree
to be what he says to be.
To heck with causality.
Great Scott, where and when are my keys?

I’ve actually been working on this for a while. I came up with ‘Fighters for hoverboards, peace and a jet pack’ while in the lunch line at CERN a year or so ago, and filled in most of the lines from the beginning up to ‘to be what he says to be’ before realising that I didn’t remember the movies well enough to write much more. So when I sort of temporarily moved to Wiener-Neustadt, I brought the DVDs with me and watched them in my hotel room, noting down some catchphrases and events I could use. I still didn’t get very far on the song. By then I’d listened to Gulf War Song again and remembered how often there are pauses and long notes and missing or extra syllables in some parts of the song that aren’t in others, or that simply weren’t in my memory of the song, so the parts I’d written with one tune in mind sounded weird in the part of the song they were in. Of course, I know how those parts could be sung so that they’d sound okay, but I want somebody who’s hearing the original song for the first time to understand how it goes. Sometimes I wish I could sing so I could mess around with scansion without it sounding weird in the readers’ heads.

This morning I intended to finish off a different song parody that I came up with the idea for last week, but in the afternoon I got this in my head, remembered the things I liked about it, did not remember the difficulties I’d had with it, and wondered why I still hadn’t finished it. So I ended up hurriedly filling in the parts I hadn’t written yet, patching up some of the problems with the rhythm, and inserting a terrible, laconic pun relating time travel by faster-than-light travel to one of Marty’s expressions, and then posting at about ten minutes to midnight. I can always go back and fix it later.

I originally wrote ‘Hovr boi’, but later changed it to ‘H0ver boi’ once I’d reminded myself how the title of the song ‘Sk8er Boi‘ is actually spelt.

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  1. Welcome, McFly. Seriously. | Creative Output
  2. ‘Accessible’ and ‘Back to the Future Song’ as actual songs | Creative Output

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