The 1980s hit that will be played until the end of time
When the Voyager Golden Records were sent into space aboard the Voyager Spacecraft launched in 1977, they contained, in a way, the only music that’d theoretically be played until the end of time.
Nasa scientists had created the time capsule to communicate Earth’s culture to extraterrestrial life, and the team, led by Carl Sagan, cherry-picked songs by the likes of Chuck Berry, Beethoven, Mozart, Louis Armstrong, more as a means of showing off what Earth was all about: Diversity, openness, creativity, and love.
Should the hypothetical aliens be able to decode the instructions to play the music, these artists would theoretically become the only musicians in our lifetime to be played on forevermore, way into a distant future when you and I have long retired to our graves, or until 2019, that is. Who’s to say longevity and legacy are only a matter for space, anyway? Along came Namibian-German artist Max Siedentopf, with an idea that’d change what was possible in the world of music forever.
Siedentopf is a huge fan of Toto’s song, ‘Africa’, which was originally released in 1982 to become one of the most enduring and recognisable melodic refrains of all time. The certified diamond single, which was revealed as the third most-streamed song of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in the UK, only behind Oasis’ ‘Wonderwall’ and Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, acts as a romantic homage to the continent.
In Siedentopf’s eyes, this was exactly why the song should be played forevermore, in the land the lyrics detail so devotionally. “I was very intrigued by this and wanted to pay the song the ultimate homage and physically exhibit ‘Africa’ in Africa,” the artist told NPR.
He added wisely, “The Namibian Desert, which is, with 55million years, the oldest desert in the world, seemed to be the perfect spot for this.”
In an undisclosed location somewhere in the middle of the 31,000 square miles of the Namibian Desert, Siedentopf set to work, hooking up a solar-powered sound installation to an mp3 player. Only the infamous Toto track was uploaded to the device, which was ordered to play the song in a loop for “all of eternity”.
When asked how long he’d like the song to play for, the artist settled on a fair 55million years. “Most parts of the installation were chosen to be as durable as possible, but I’m sure the harsh environment of the desert will devour the installation eventually,” he admitted. The solar batteries theoretically could run forever; only our impact on the changing climate poses a threat to the ingenious sculpture and homage.
In 2025, a YouTube explorer named Adam Carter went in search of the six-part stereo structure, taking hints from the shape of the dessert from the initial pictures of the sculpture. After a relentless search, he concluded that the atmosphere and environment had already swallowed the installation whole. One last final embrace between earth and music, art and its muse, the natural and the universal coming together to lie hand in hand. It doesn’t sound like such a bad thing after all.
