2112 (pronounced "twenty-one twelve") is the fourth studio album by Canadian rock band Rush, released in March 1976 by Mercury Records.
The band was in financial hardship due to the disappointing sales of 1975's Caress of Steel, which also got an unfavourable critical reception and a decline in attendance at its shows.
[12] 2112 has been reissued several times: a 40th Anniversary Edition was released in 2016 with previously unreleased material, including the album performed by numerous contemporary artists.
However, guitarist Alex Lifeson recalled the group was in a state of confusion after the tour, sensing the disappointing reaction from crowds after playing songs from it on stage.
[16] To help the situation Rush manager Ray Danniels flew to the label's head offices in Chicago to try to regain confidence and spoke highly of the band's ideas for a new album without having heard any of it.
[14] In January 1976, the band entered Toronto Sound Studios to record with their longtime associate Terry Brown assuming his role as producer, operating a Studer 24-track machine.
The seven-part track is based on a story by Peart who credits Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand, inventor of the philosophy of Objectivism and author of the dystopian fictional novella Anthem, the plot of which bears several similarities to "2112".
The band had read the book, and Peart added the credit in the album's liner notes to avoid legal action.
[23] In the British paper NME, Barry Miles made allusions of the Rand influence to Nazism, which particularly offended Lee, whose parents were Holocaust survivors.
[13] "Overture" begins with a soundscape from musician and album cover artist Hugh Syme performed on his ARP Odyssey synthesizer with an envelope filter and Echoplex Delay pedal.
[13][14] "2112" tells a story set in the city of Megadon in the year 2112, after an intergalactic war in 2062 forces many of the planets to be ruled by the Solar Federation (symbolized by the Red Star on the cover artwork), where music is unknown and individualism and creativity are outlawed.
[25][23][13] Side two contains five individual songs that display the band's more traditional hard-rock sound and Lee's higher-pitched vocals featured on their previous albums.
The track mentions a number of cities and countries, specifically Bogotá, Jamaica, Acapulco, Morocco, Bangkok, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Kathmandu.
[28] The band were big fans of the television series The Twilight Zone and based the track on the stories written for it from its host, Rod Serling.
[21] Peart was inspired by graffiti on a wall that he saw while on his way to perform at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles that read "Freedom isn't free", which he adapted into the song.
[27] The album was packaged in a gatefold sleeve designed and produced by longtime Rush cover artist Hugh Syme.
It marks the first appearance of the emblem later known by fans as the "Starman" logo, which was adopted into the band's stage design and future album covers.
[30] The gatefold includes a photograph of the band dressed in white and standing in front of a wind machine, and was a shoot Lifeson remembered for being particularly awkward.
[19] In June 1976, the album had outsold the band's past catalogue in Canada and the United States,[23] selling close to 35,000 and more than 200,000 copies, respectively.
[33] 2112 became a strong seller in the United States; it reached gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in November 1977 for selling 500,000 copies.
[34] In November 1995, the album reached triple platinum for selling more than 3 million copies, becoming Rush's second-biggest seller after Moving Pictures.
"[42] In an article about 2112 for Creem, Dan Nooger wrote the album "features some significant Mellotron meanderings and amazingly eccentric lyrics".