This 1962 Elvis Presley Song Was Outdated Within Months, Thanks to This Governmental Change

Pop music reflects the times, both sonically and lyrically. With each passing decade, a new wave of popular song topics, recording techniques, and instrumental gear comes to define that specific moment in history. These developments make what came before them seem old and antiquated, like when Bruce Springsteen wrote about a man who had 57 cable television channels as if he were a millionaire, or when Sir Mix-A-Lot made an entire song dedicated to pagers.

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Elvis Presley once found himself with an outdated song mere months after releasing it, which, in a way, seems like foreshadowing of the career slump he would experience in the following years. Indeed, within a year of Presley releasing “Return To Sender” in 1962, some of his lyrics felt as outdated as if he were singing about messenger pigeons or the Pony Express.

Why “Return To Sender” Turned so Old so Quickly

Elvis Presley recorded Winfield Scott and Otis Blackwell’s song, “Return To Sender”, for the 1962 musical comedy, Girls! Girls! Girls! One of many Presley vehicles for the silver screen, this particular film saw the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll as a poor fisherman in Hawaii named Ross Carpenter. As was tradition in Presley’s films, he broke into song several times throughout the movie, and those songs enjoyed success on their own on pop charts around the world.

“Return To Sender” peaked at No. 2 in the States and topped the charts in the U.K. Although The Four Seasons’ “Big Girls Don’t Cry” kept Presley from reaching No. 1 in his native U.S., the RIAA still gave the record a platinum certification. The song is fairly straightforward. A man is trying to apologize to his lover via the U.S. post, but he keeps receiving the letter the next day with the notes, “Return to sender / Address unknown / No such number / No such zone.”

The lyrics are unremarkable until the last stanza, which refers to “zones” determined by the United States Post Office Department (the predecessor to the USPS) in 1943. Zones were meant to help new mail carriers acclimate to a delivery area more quickly, since the ongoing war led to incredibly high turnover. Two decades later, in July 1963, the USPOD introduced ZIP codes, which provided more accurate geographic information than a single city-wide zone.

Presley had only released “Return To Sender” nine months earlier, effectively turning the last line of the chorus into an anachronism within the year. But hey—at least the title wasn’t one giant antiquity, á la Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Beepers” from 1989.

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