By Ranjit Singh, ADVANCE ENVIRONMENTAL COLUMNIST
Appearances aside, most tree huggers are actually rearwards-looking reactionaries.
You read that right. Don’t let our Patagonia vests and limited edition Subarus fool you. We’re no progressives aiming for a utopian future. For generations now, many of us have been seeking to recreate the past with an intensity that would make the most committed alt-righter blush.
The environmental past, as in: “I just want my kids to breathe the same clean air my daddy and granddaddy did, gosh darn it!”
Sadly, many of the triumphs and mischief made by the early eco-amateurs – the cheery stoners of Greenpeace, the careening firebrands of Earth First! – have now dissipated. Over time, hard-won environmental regulations have been hobbled by lobbyists expert in the dark arts of policy implementation (a political plant that grows best in the shade) or reversed by elected handmaidens.
Most disconcertingly, the rhetoric of green politics has lost its innocence and force. Against all evidence, today even multinational oil companies claim to be good stewards of the Earth.
When everybody’s an environmentalist, nobody’s an environmentalist.
So “green” words have never come cheaper than they do now. Addressing the cliches and empty phrases of many of today’s environmental “leaders,” youthful Swedish activist Greta Thunberg put it perfectly:
There is no Planet B. There is no planet blah…
blah, blah, blah – blah, blah, blah.
Someone, please put that to music.
Which brings me to my point.
Someone did put it to music, and the result is an unlistenable piece of aural pablum. Viewer beware:
This need not be the case. At its best, socially-relevant popular music imparts a shared emotion and sense of purpose. As Americans digested the import of the first Earth Day in 1970, then the largest, single-day protest in US history, they were hit by Marvin Gaye’s anthemic “Mercy Mercy Me (Ecology Song),” a catchy 1971 earworm that quickly rose to the top of the charts. For younger readers, here’s a taste of Gaye’s lyrics:
Oh, mercy mercy me
Oh things ain’t what they used to be, no no
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows
From the north and south and east
Ah, things ain’t what they used to be, no no
Citing oil spills, mercury poisoning in fish, radiation leaks, and disappearing wildlife, Gaye croons on: Things ain’t what they used to be. We need to do better. The Earth was healthier before.
The gifted R&B singer had plenty of company, too. That same year, 1971, FM radio launched Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” (“Don’t it always seem to go/that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”), Joan Baez’ “Rejoice in the Sun,” and Bo Diddley’s “Pollution.” John Prine’s “Paradise,” another 1971 song that’s become a folk standard, focuses on the horrors of strip mining. It begins, “When I was a child my family would travel/down to western Kentucky where my parents were born.” Subsequent verses make plain that that Kentucky no longer exists. Folk musicians like Prine stood out in their nostalgia for the cleaner past.
One needn’t like every song to appreciate that American musicians of a certain vintage did environmentalism right. The peak of popular eco-awareness probably arrived with John Denver’s 1972 timeless hit “Rocky Mountain High.” That ubiquitous pop song describes a young man’s awakening to nature (and offers a nice marijuana double entendre to boot). It hit the Billboard charts hard, going on to become Colorado’s state song. Importantly, such music motivated ordinary people to think more considerately about nature.
And so I wonder: Does today’s environmental movement have a compelling soundtrack? If there is one, I haven’t heard it.
Does it matter?
Yes.
Animals often sing about the condition of their homeplaces. A male songbird in possession of good territory will happily tell the feathered ladies all about it. Among humans, old-time musicians, country singers, and hip hop artists frequently wax poetic about the creeks and hollows, small towns, or city streets at the center of their lives.
But a common playlist of popular, environmentally-minded music is nowhere to be found. Some of today’s nostalgic songs about the homeplace can even be aggressively exclusionary, divisive, and downright threatening. Think Jason Aldean’s controversial hit “Try That in a Small Town,” which describes life in a place he’s apparently never lived. Sample lyrics: “Cuss out a cop, spit in his face … Well, try that in a small town/See how far ya make it down the road./Around here, we take care of our own …”
Ouch. Good luck demanding authorities enforce federal wetlands protections over a developer’s property rights in that town.
Of what value is a good soundtrack to reform-minded people?
At the risk of stating the obvious, politics, social change, and music have always intertwined. For my money, the Vietnam-era anti-war movement enjoyed the best protest soundtrack in US history. Some music is so consequential — or assumed to be so consequential — that it even attracts the attention of the authorities.
Of course, official disapproval often makes a song consequential. Take the example of Native American musician Link Wray. Wray’s 1958 tune “Rumble” is considered the progenitor of rock and roll’s iconic “power chord.” You’ve almost certainly heard it.
The slightly menacing tune was first improvised in my small hometown (where I’ve actually lived), and in time “Rumble” became a darling of misfits and dissidents. As a teenager, counterculture icon Bob “The Times They Are a-Changing” Dylan saw Wray perform the tune live. Dylan eventually opened shows with his own version of “Rumble.” He called it “the best instrumental ever.” A generation later, the unforgettable melody featured in director Quentin Tarantino’s era-defining 1994 film Pulp Fiction.
A few guitar chords won’t change the world. The people in charge aren’t always so sure, though. In his own time, Wray’s “Rumble” was assumed to promote juvenile delinquency, urban revolt, and other forms of dissent. The powers that be pushed it off the airwaves — a truly extraordinary reaction, given that the tune has no lyrics!
Just hearing Wray’s distorted notes, they thought, threatened the status quo.
Are there any contemporary tunes that might galvanize opposition to today’s terrifying environmental state of affairs?
Admittedly, I’m too old to know the current music scene well. So I turn to the expertise of others. Four years ago, the magazine of the Sierra Club published a list of eleven contemporary songs that address climate change. Compiled by journalist Heather Hansman, you can find the list here. I’ve listened to them all, and some are pretty good.
Personal taste aside, however, the problem is that our (mostly digital) listening habits are so atomized today that none of these songs, including those by mainstream stars like Billie Eilish, rises above obscurity for most music fans, much less a broader, multigenerational audience.
Go ahead, ask your friends to hum a few bars from Grimes’ “Before the Fever.” The earnestness of the individual artists isn’t in question here; the frontman of the band Pinegrove even sings his plodding tune “Orange” from the bow of a canoe. Personally, I find Lake Street Dive’s “Making Do” thoughtful and persuasive (Lyrics: What do I say to my baby girl/leaving her with half a world/That we could have done a lot?). But there’s much more shoe-gazing on this list than rousing calls-to-arms, and the crossover appeal of each song seems helplessly limited.
The Sierra Club’s list isn’t authoritative, of course. My favorite environmental song of the past decade, 2018’s Grammy-nominated “Feels Like Summer” by Childish Gambino, gets no mention at all. Yet even that poignant R&B tune never equates to an anthem for environmentalists. I’ll bet you’ve never heard it.
[Side note: Don’t even TRY to convince me that hit songs featured in CGI blockbuster movies like Avatar, Mulan, The Lion King, and even Wall-E (the latter featuring a tune by the esteemed Peter Gabriel) amount to more than corporate greenwashing.]
So while Greta Thunberg seems a natural lyricist, she, like the rest of us, awaits a true musical rallying cry. We environmentalists need a song that transcends genres and generations. A catchy tune that arouses emotions and propels us towards action. How wonderful would it be to return to a time when popular music helped inspire and unite the environmental movement?
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Ranjit Singh teaches in the Department of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Mary Washington. He’s also an active environmentalist. His “No Lines in Nature” Substack blends history, science, and philosophy to explore our relationship with the natural world world. You can find it HERE. You can find an earlier version of this essay HERE.
Moving.