1979 · Behind the Songs
George Lucas on the screen, a love story in the grooves.
For Toto’s second album, Hydra (1979), David Paich reached for the movies. He had been struck by George Lucas’s THX 1138, the stark 1971 film about a dehumanized future, and he answered it with a love song set in that same cold tomorrow. “99” imagines romance surviving in a world of numbers and machines — tenderness as an act of rebellion.
The title nods to the film’s world of coded designations, and the production leans into it: cool synthesizers, a clipped groove, Bobby Kimball’s voice floating above like a transmission from somewhere better. It was an odd, brave single for a rock band in 1979, and it still reached the Top 30, peaking at number twenty-six.
The video matched the concept — the band in white, bathed in light, playing like scientists of pop. “99” didn’t change Toto’s direction so much as prove they had more than one: they could do muscle, and they could do moonlight.