This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to Songs about… the Environment and the Climate Crisis…

Okay, IEL started out on thematic This Weekends, and the last few weeks we’ve had a fair few ones. Wolves and Food from IEL, UFOs from myself. So let’s keep it topical. This is the Extinction Rebellion protest week, so what better time for songs about the environment and more particularly the climate crisis. What groups have stepped up and engaged directly with that?

It’s kind of cheating to cast the net overly wide (‘Ice Age’ by Joy Division doesn’t count… in so many ways!). First song that came to mind was Silent Spring by the first and very Byrd’s like iteration of Primal Scream, a song that just about shades it given it references Rachel Carson’s foundational book on the environment from the 1960s. Getting…er… hot…

And then it struck me there were many many more like Orbital, Beach Boys, Sabbath, and many others. Here is just a sampling, feel free to add your own in comments if you like.

I was tempted to throw in the Sisters of Mercy Black Planet but with them one has the feeling they kind of want the environmental collapse (sample lyric “Run around in the radiation, Run around in the acid rain, On a Black Black planet”). My favourite of the ones below… well all of them really, but perhaps Hawkwind, Orbital and Rubella Ballet.

Note the sub-genre around the early 1970s of which Joan Baez is particularly characteristic (Rejoice in the Sun, still fantastically emotive, was used in the very impressive Silent Running).

Orbital – Impact Earth is Burning

Hawkwind – We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago

C.W. McCall – There Won’t Be No Country Music (There Won’t Be No Rock ‘N’ Roll)

Joan Baez – Rejoice in the Sun

Primal Scream – Silent Spring

Killing Joke – Colony Collapse

Deelite – I Had a Dream I Was Falling Through a Hole in the Ozone Layer

Róisín Murphy – Dear Miami

Bad Religion – Kyoto Now!

Black Sabbath – Children of the Sea

The Chills – Underwater Wasteland

Marvin Gaye – Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)

Rubella Ballet – Arctic Flowers