Surprisingly, my favorite song about robots taking over is not The Streets’ The Robots are Taking Over. (That’s my second favorite.) The top spot is reserved for Citizens of Tomorrow by Tokyo Police Club.

This 2006 tune into the future–all the way to 2009–to imagine a frightening brave new world.

Let’s take a look at some of the lyrics.

Our robot masters will know
How to clean this mess up
And build a better world
For man and machine alike
For the boys and the girls
Who are slaves building spaceships at night
In the fluorescent light.
That’s 2009.

Child slaves building spaceships? Frightening indeed. But it doesn’t stop there.

I have a microchip
Implanted in my heart
So if I try to escape
The robots will blow me apart
And my limbs will go flying
And land before the ones that I love.

Man, 2009 sounds HORRIBLE!

But it sure makes for a great song.

And now back to The Streets. My favorite white British rapper (aka Mike Skinner) loved to rhyme about the wonders and ills of technology. (In fact, he wrote a whole album about it called Computers and Blues.) 

Here are a few lines from The Robots are Taking Over [VIDEO]:

We used to control it but now we let it control us
Made it to connect us but it turns it into loners
Now they double check our names and act like they don’t know us
And one day they turn then they will certainly dethrone us.

Dang robots.
But Mr. Skinner also writes a few nice things about bleeps and boops, including my number one favorite song about cell phones.

And who could forget Skinner’s heartfelt shout-out to the ultrasound machine as he sings to his unborn child on Blip on the Screen [VIDEO]? Priceless.But no list of robots and phones and computers is complete without Bad Religion’s 21st Century Digital Boy. Greg Graffin wants to punch technology in the face!

Check out all these songs here. [VIDEO PLAYLIST]