He might as well have been describing the mental flood of social media, especially the way it sweeps away rational argument and stokes divisions, as everyone’s innermost thoughts are broadcast to the world. It’s ironic that the flood of disinformation on social media has come to dominate public discourse at exactly the moment in history when we most need to come together to address the climate crisis.
“There’s no point in direction / We cannot even choose a side”
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs

Gabriel wrote the song after a dream “in which the psychic barriers which normally prevent us from seeing into each others’ thoughts had been completely eroded producing a mental flood”. Such a flood would sweep away those who prefer to cut themselves off as islands—concealing their innermost thoughts—just as much as those who are open and honest.
https://musicaficionado.blog/2016/01/24/here-comes-the-flood-by-robert-fripp-and-peter-gabriel/
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs

Time for another Friday #ClimateRocks. Last week I promised three songs that appear to be about climate change but are not (at least not directly). The second is #PeterGabriel with his 1977 song Here Comes the Flood:
“Lord, here comes the flood / We’ll say goodbye to flesh and blood / If again the seas are silent / In any still alive…”
It could be about sea level rise and flash floods from extreme weather events under global warming. It’s not...
#ClimateSongs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wS8V8vCUqw

@takvera
Thanks! How could I have missed that? The album cover instantly has me hooked...
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs

Ironically, in 2009, a large group of celebrities repurposed Beds are Burning as a climate protest song, with updated lyrics. And in the process, they eradicated the Indigenous land issues the song was written about.
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs
https://www.youtube.com/embed/aBTZOg6l6cA

It’s no coincidence colonialists work to eradicate Indigenous cultures. Those cultures offer radical alternatives to extractivism: eg land should belong to the community not the individual, and it must be safeguarded for the benefit of future generations.
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-08-05/extractivism/

The connection to climate change is deep: colonialism spread the idea that we can buy and sell (and steal) land, own the rights to natural resources, and extract them for profit without taking responsibility for the long term consequences.
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs

Beds are Burning was actually written to raise awareness of the need to return stolen land to Indigenous communities, in this case, the return of Iluru (previously Ayers Rock) in Australia to the Anangu peoples, to whom it is a sacred site.
https://www.songwritingmagazine.co.uk/how-i-wrote/beds-are-burning-midnight-oil
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs

Time for our regular Friday #ClimateRocks. Next up, three songs that appear to be about climate change, but are not. Interestingly, each is about a different global issue that connects to the climate crisis in important ways. The first is Midnight Oil from 1987 with Beds are Burning. The chorus is instantly familiar:
“How can we dance when our earth is turning? / How do we sleep while our beds are burning?”
But it's not about climate change...
#ClimateSongs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejorQVy3m8E

So this was written a couple of years before Miley Cyrus’s Wake Up America, and, I think, a lot more convincing, because it’s focussed inwards on shaking oneself out of denial, rather than berating others to do so. And realizing connections matter:
“I am not an island / I am not alone”.
Oh, and I listened a lot to Melissa Etheridge in the 90s, so I have a soft spot for her voice.
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs

This week's #ClimateRocks picks up on the same theme as last week’s. It’s Melissa Etheridge with “I need to Wake Up“, written in 2006, specifically for the movie An Inconvenient Truth, and an Academy Award winner for best original song.
"Have I been sleeping..."
#ClimateSongs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUVqUz8m2PQ

Miley wrote this during one of the big waves of activism on climate change, around the time of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, and the lead up to the 2009 Copenhagen talks, which were supposed to usher in a new global agreement, but were completely derailed by fossil fuel funded disinformation. Today’s teens, of course, grew up in a very different world. They do know what all this means, and are (rightfully) a lot more angry about it.
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs

This week's Friday #ClimateRocks is Miley Cyrus, with her 2008 song Wake Up America. Incredibly, Miley was only 16 when she wrote it, but it captures perfectly the bewilderment of a 2000s teen discovering the climate crisis:
“I want to learn what it’s all about but
Everything I read’s global warming, going green
I don’t know what all this means
But it seems to be saying…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNEZp8BWGEU
#ClimateSongs

As a bonus, here’s a whole essay about how Neil Young has addressed climate change and environmental issues during his long career.
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs
https://erstwhileblog.com/2020/04/22/the-environmentalism-of-neil-young/

Interestingly, Neil Young released a new video for Shut it Down in 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic, which deftly re-purposes the song for the collective effort to flatten the curve. Actually, watching that video almost seems nostalgic. That was long before the anti-vaxxers and lockdown protesters destroyed the collective sense that we are all responsible for protecting one another.
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeLdjvH57z4

And it’s immediately followed on the album by a grungy protest song, Shut it Down, which really gets to the heart of the matter:
“They’re all wearing climate change/As cool as they can be/Have to shut the whole system down”
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXgNmK-deZc

This week's #ClimateRocks is by Neil Young, who, like Buffy Ste Marie last week, has been singing environmental protest songs since the 1960s.
Two songs on Neil Young’s 2019 album Colorado are explicitly about climate change, so I’m going to share them both.
#ClimateSongs

Carry it On represents only the latest in a long series of protest songs from Buffy, covering Indigenous rights, peace, and environmental justice, going all the way back to her 1960s anti-war anthem Universal Soldier. Buffy donated the song Carry it On to the global climate movement, and it works brilliantly as the protest song we need, inviting us to take heart and join together in collective action to protect the Earth. It’s all about hope.
#ClimateRocks #ClimateSongs

This week's #ClimateRocks song has to be Buffy Sainte-Marie with Carry it On, from her 2015 album, Power in the Blood. In contrast to Billie Eilish last week, this song is full of hope, a call to action.
#ClimateSongs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08gyjR0Sk4s

Can #ClimateSongs #ClimateRocks include adjacent topics? Because my nomination is one about sustainability and awareness. It's Landsailor by Vienna Teng, and I think it's best described as a duet between humankind and capitalism.

https://youtu.be/Hm4BAEa1vBY