A search of Billboard charts at the time of “All Star’s” release in 1999 turned up only two other popular artists who referenced the issue in their music. Camp and his bandmates broached climate change at a time when most popular musicians were not doing so. Its inclusion in “Shrek,” for example, brings the song and its ideas to new generations.Īnd Mr. But “All Star” endures in part because the band authorized its use “to every single thing,” Mr. “All Star” isn’t the first time the band tackled climate change: “Walkin’ on the Sun,” released two years earlier, also touched on the subject. He said he felt that musicians and other artists that have a podium needed to at least mention climate change “to try and get people to be a part of the problem-solving as opposed to part of the problem.” “I’m no scientist, I’m just the guy that writes songs and plays guitar,” Smash Mouth’s Mr. (The others are about the forced removal of Australian Aboriginal people, the 9/11 attacks and hooking up at the club.) Smash Mouth’s “All Star” was mentioned repeatedly and has the distinction of actually being about climate change. Several songs - Midnight Oil’s “Beds Are Burning,” Sarah McLachlan’s “World on Fire” and Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” - came up that aren’t about climate change.
This year we asked people on Twitter for their favorite songs by popular artists that are related to climate change. Take a look at, and listen to, some of the highlights, beginning in 1999 when a California power-pop band called Smash Mouth warned us that the ice was getting pretty thin. Two-thirds came in the last decade, which was also the hottest decade on record, with 26 of the songs released last year. And like climate change, those references are accelerating. Yet in recent decades, even as climate change caused temperatures to soar and triggered lethal hurricanes, catastrophic fires and cataclysmic floods across the United States and its territories, a keen ear could hear the theme of global warming starting to swell, from country to rap, rock to pop.Ī look at lyrics from all artists who have appeared on any of Billboard’s domestic charts in the past two decades revealed at least 192 references to climate change. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the music of bounce artist 5th Ward Webbie crystallized the feeling, common among many New Orleanians, that their government had abandoned them. Twenty-five years ago, after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, “Lightning Crashes” by the rock band Live seemed to put a voice to the nation’s pain. It can help hold us together, both as individuals and collectively, when a trauma sends ripples across society.
At its best, music can act as a kind of auditory restorative, lifting us up when we're down.
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