Yesterday – The Backup Song

 

Recently a song called Yesterday – The Backup Song, has been posted around the web. It is a parody of the Beatles’ Yesterday with a funny lyric about data backups. I first published it on my website way back in 1999. A quick search revealed that many people have claimed that song in the past 13 years, and it has been re-published all over the Web.

Meh. Whatever. No harm done.

The lyric was written for me by a great PR person in the late 90’s, Sunni Freyer.

A second stanza was written by Bill Frick in late 1998. You can find the original page from my VERY OLD website on the Wayback Machine Internet Archives for January 17, 1999 here:

http://web.archive.org/web/19990117031458/http://alice.net/yesterda.htm

Here is the original lyric of both stanzas:

 

Yesterday,

All those backups seemed a waste of pay.

Now my database has gone away.

Oh I believe in yesterday.

 

Suddenly,

There’s not half the files there used to be,

And there’s a deadline

hanging over me.

The system crashed so suddenly.

 

I pushed something wrong

What it was I could not say.

Now my data’s gone

and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.

 

Yesterday,

The need for back-ups seemed so far away.

Thought all my data was here to stay,

Now I believe in yesterday.

 

——————————————-

 

Woe is me,

It happened so unexpectedly,

Now my clients are all mad at me,

How will I ever collect my fee ?

 

Sheepishly,

I explained my catastrophe,

I expected some sympathy,

Now all of them are leaving me !

 

Let me be,

Wallowing in my misery,

Disaster, I could not foresee,

All because of a bad floppy.

 

Pity me,

All I wanted was to format B,

My finger slipped and pressed C,

And now I can’t find a boot floppy.

 

Here try this,

He promised it would bring more bliss,

I didn’t know it had a virus,

It’s aim was true it did not miss.