Some of your favorite songs of yesteryear famously boast of spending lavishly but much like Dr. Evil the dollar amounts don’t impress with our inflated currency in the present time. But what would these songs prices be if we adjusted for inflation?
When Tone Loc found out in 1988 that the fly honey he met would actually need $50 to make him holla it seemed like a lot of money. But today he would need $97.33. I don’t know if the fly honey would require exact change, something tells me she’d ask for a Benjamin to keep things simple.
In 1992 the Barenaked Ladies first put to music all the things they would do if they had $1,000,000, though it’s unclear if they were referring to Canadian dollars or US dollars. If they were to find things to do with that $1M today they would have $1,641,339.99 to spend. Of course, the things they would be buying would also be more expensive so they wouldn’t necessarily have increased buying power.
Right around the same time in 1992 Dr Dre was hosting a game show on The Chronic called $20 Sack Pyramid. The prize for winning was a $20 sack (they don’t call the album The Chronic for nothing) and a $35 gift certificate to the Compton Swap Meet. If you were the lucky winner of that game show today you would win a $32.83 sack and a $57.45 gift certificate to the Compton Swap Meet. It should be noted that the Compton Swap Meet has a 4 star rating on Yelp.
2007 doesn’t seem like that long ago but that’s when Birdman brought together a few friends who told the world that they could spend about $100M. In the big picture not much has changed since 2007 due to a financial meltdown in the interim. So, today they would only be able to spend about $111,062,881.60. It’s not chump change, but it’s not a huge increase either.
Someone who had smaller denominations in mind was George Clinton in 1970 (as Funkadelic) when he he brought it in a way that only he could in Funky Dollar Bill. There can be no doubt that same dollar bill is still funky but now he would have a full $5.94 worth of funk. That doesn’t sound like much funk, but George Clinton has class A shares of funk and his funk is worth more than yours.
In 2005 M.I.A. had a story to tell about a gold platinum digger. That nice young lady said that for $10 you can get anything you want. In 2013 it would only cost a modest $11.11 to get anything you want. That’s a pretty good deal.
In 1973 Stevie Wonder wrote the legendary Living for the City. In it he describes the low wages of barely making a dollar for 14 hours of work. If he were to have worked a standard 40 hour week then a gross pay of just $2.86 wouldn’t be very much. That same low pay today would be a measly $14.83 for a whole week.
Joe Jackson also had the idea that $50 for a bit of love was the right amount of money in 1986. The right amount of money for some love today would be $105.05. Though, I hear money can’t buy you love.
Finally, though it’s not a song, if 50 Cent were to be born today instead of in 1975 he would actually be $2.14. Or maybe that should be 214 Cent.
Photo: Flickr
