Oh my gosh, you won’t believe it! This song was totally inspired by Stephen Hawking’s super cool book from way back in 1988 called ‘A Brief History of Time’. The book is all about the Big Bang and Black Holes, and it blew Brett’s mind when he first read it. He was like, “Dude, the lines ‘Big Bang, big crunch/You know there’s no free lunch’ totally explain Hawking’s idea that there’s no extra energy in the universe. Nothing gets lost, man. If it goes out, it’s gotta collapse. It can’t just keep going forever.”
But wait, there’s more! The chorus of the song, “Big crunch, don’t you know there’s no free lunch,” is a metaphor for the possibility of a closed universe. It’s like, the universe explodes and implodes over and over again for all of time. And the whole “no free lunch” thing means there’s no free energy anywhere in the universe. It’s all used up, man.
And get this, Brett uses the idea of population and personal breathing room as a metaphor for whether the universe is open or closed. If it’s open, there’s a chance that life can exist forever. But if it’s closed, when the universe contracts and time goes backwards, everything heats up until it’s all squished into a single point, and life is totally toast.
Isn’t that mind-blowing? I’m telling you, this song is deep. You gotta check out the references if you don’t believe me. Thrasher Magazine and an interview with Brett himself. It’s all there, man.
This content was originally written by the badass contributors of thebrpage.net, the best superfan resource and website that exists for any band, let alone the best band in the whole entire world. I’ve been lurking on that site for over 20 years and if you’re into Bad Religion as much as I am, I’m sure you’re familiar. If you are not, go there right now and never come back to this site again. You should, and I totally understand.
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