Focus on Arts and Ecology

This year, I came up with the idea to analyze the frequency of climate change references in American popular music. Culture can be a bellwether, both signaling where we are heading and, occasionally, helping to steer society’s course. And while, anecdotally, it seemed that climate change has been appearing more frequently in music, I wanted to put numbers to it.

I looked at lyrics from a set of songs that the lyric hub Genius identified as containing climate change themes (based on search terms I had provided). And I compared the artists on that list with the Billboard charts, selecting only those who had appeared on domestic charts in the past two decades.

I counted at least 192 references to climate change, 26 of which appeared just last year. For an article, I pared that down to 10 influential songs and spoke with some of the artists.

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The first song on the list, “All Star” by the California power-pop band Smash Mouth, might be surprising. But many have pointed to this earworm as the unofficial climate change anthem, and the song’s lyrics have shown up on protest posters and in memes. It’s an infectious song, and now you might be humming the chorus (“Hey now, you’re an all star”) to yourself.

I wanted to know why Greg Camp, the band’s guitarist and songwriter, had chosen to include climate change messaging in a verse of a song that was mostly about self empowerment. I also wanted to know why the rapper Pitbull had slipped climate messaging into dance-friendly tracks — and had even gone so far as to name two albums after the subject. Both told me in a nutshell that climate change matters, and that, as musicians with a platform, they felt an obligation to address it.

There’s some evidence, according to Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, that art, and culture more broadly, can shift people into action on climate change. That more artists are addressing it, “is a mirror to the times,” he said. It’s a reflection of our cultural understanding of climate change and also influences our perception of it.

As a fun bonus, the manager of Smash Mouth sent along a photo of the original handwritten lyrics when I had questions about the song. It’s cool to see how it evolved. And, I must say, Mr. Camp’s handwriting would have passed muster with the nuns who taught me penmanship. To learn more about what the artists had to say and to see the full list, check out the article.