Recently, while perusing ATL’s own Criminal Records, I happened upon a curious 7” emblazoned with “Carl Sagan: A Glorious Dawn.” Since I’ve always been prone to geeking out over life-affirming contextualizations of astrophysics (and since one of the store clerks assured me, quite emphatically, that it was “amazing, the best record of the year”), I immediately snagged it. And you know what? He’s definitely right about the amazing part. It’s a three-and-a-half minute song culled from auto-tuned clips of Sagan’s Cosmos TV series, a MIDI-fied backing track, and a guest verse from—get ready for this one—Stephen Hawking. Here are my favorite verses from this little gem:
1. “The sky calls to us / if we do not destroy ourselves / we will one day venture to the stars”
2. “The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths / of exquisite interrelationships / of the awesome machinery of nature”