A while back, Jamais noted "Manhattan in January" (MP3), a cheeky song about global warming by Jill Sobule, written in response to Al Gore's now-famed presentation on the subject. Jamais asked, "Is this the first pop song about global warming?" Ever since then it's been nagging me, and I finally remembered why.
I give you "Sleeping In," by the Postal Service -- in particular I draw your attention to the second verse:
Last week I had the strangest dream
That everything was exactly how it seemed
Where there was never any mystery
Of who shot John F. Kennedy
It was just a man with something to prove
Slightly bored and severely confused
He steadied his rifle with his target in the center
And became famous on that day in November
Don't wake me, I plan on sleeping in . . .
Again last night I had that strange dream
Where everything was exactly how it seemed
No concerns about the world getting warmer
People thought that they were just being rewarded
For treating others as they'd like to be treated
For obeying stop signs and curing diseases
For mailing letters with the address of the sender
Now we can swim any day in November
Don't wake me, I plan on sleeping in . . .
It's not exactly a think-tank white paper, I'll give you that, but it certainly sounds like an unmistakable, if somewhat oblique, reference.
Any other songs you know of address the subject?
Friday music blogging: Here We Go Magic
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Payton Chung Posted 7:01 pm
16 Mar 2006
Still doesn't beat a Stars concert I went to, where Torquil Campbell said something along the lines of, "we could be the first generation that says, `forget about getting there on time, I'm going to save the planet and walk.'"
Hey, we'll need a lot of help to make "dead" environmentalism a little more alive and relevant to folks, I guess, and some benefit concerts might be cool.
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Vincenze Posted 10:33 pm
16 Mar 2006
Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot SPOT
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
`Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to seem 'em
Don't it always seem to go,
That you don't know what you've got
`Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
Hey farmer, farmer
Put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples
But LEAVE me the birds and the bees
Please!
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
`Til its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
Late last night
I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi
Took away my old man
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
`Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
I said
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
`Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
Vincenze.
http://www.vincenze.com
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zcaron Posted 1:37 am
17 Mar 2006
Jack Johnson has some great lyrics in "Staple it Together"
______
It's really too bad
He became a prisoner of his own past...
It's really no good
He's moving on before he understood
He shot the future in the foot with every step he took
From the places that he's been because he forgot to look
He better staple it together and call it bad weather
...If the weather gets better we should get together
...And if we get together we'd be twice as clever
So staple it together and call it bad weather
________
I am not sure what he meant when he wrote it but I guess it depends on how you interpret it.
This one is about air pollution etc. in general, also by Jack Johnson, called "Traffic in the Sky"
________
There's traffic in the sky
and it doesn't seem to be getting much better
There's kids playing games on the pavement
Drawing waves on the pavement
Shadows of the planes on the pavement
It's enough to make me cry
But that don't seem like it would make it feel better
Maybe it's a dream and if I scream
it will burst at the seams and
this whole place will fall into pieces
and then they'd say...
Well how could we have known?
I'll tell them it's not so hard to tell
if you keep adding stones
soon the water will be lost in the well
Puzzle pieces in the ground
but no one ever seems to be digging
Instead they're looking up towards the heavens
with their eyes on the heavens
the shadows on the way to the heavens
It's enough to make me cry
but that don't seem like it would make it feel better
The answers could be found
we could learn from digging down
but no one ever seems to be digging
instead they'll say...
Well how could we have known?
I'll tell them it's not so hard to tell
if you keep adding stones
soon the water will be lost in the well
Words of wisdom all around
but no one ever seems to listen
They talk about their plans on the paper
Building up from the pavement
there're shadows from the scrapers on the pavement
It's enough to make me sigh
but that don't seem like it would make it feel better
The words are all around
but the words are only sounds
and no one ever seems to listen
Instead they'll say...
Well how could we have known?
I'll tell them it's really not so hard to tell
If you keep adding stones
soon the water will be lost in the well
lost in the well
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kmp Posted 1:54 am
17 Mar 2006
Malathion in our air
Mutant race developing,
Hypodermic sewage on shorelines,
Oil spills in the sea
Marine life disappears,
Extermination we contend,
Vanishing life we see
Reality's nightmare,
Environmental litigations,
Hazardous contamination
Lost cause situation,
Power plants pump the waste,
Dump sites overwhelm
Wildlife deteriorating.
Cars polluting / All our air /
Smog fills / Our lungs to hell
Politicians / Don't really care /
End this crisis
They never will.
Rapid pollution of the sea
Sewage falling out of greed
Global warming! Nationwide situation
Harmful waste! Nuclear cultivation
Garbage overflows...
..From land to shining sea
We deserve what we create,
In the Land of the Free
Toxic waste, generations harvest
Carbon dioxide in the air
That we breathe
In the air that we breathe!
Lead: DF
Global warming! Nationwide situation
Harmful waste! Nuclear cultivation
Nitrogen oxide, cancerous affliction
We deserve what we create
In the Land of the Free
Ultra violet / Radiation /
Groundwater / Contamination
Oil refineries / Spew the carbons /
Lung damage
Ozone depletion!
Global warming...
..Making profits all they care
Global warming...
..Clean air act is not enough
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Stentor Posted 5:43 am
17 Mar 2006
And then there's Captain Sea Level.
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Andy Slabaugh Posted 9:42 am
17 Mar 2006
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waterbug Posted 5:49 am
18 Mar 2006
VERTIGO by Sonia Rutstein
The grossest understatement of the year. Two thousand people melt cause our hearts are made of fear. We built empires of money mania design. Now they expire, cause we live in a coffin of Time...Life could be simple...Life could be simple.
CHORUS:
Why don't we all fall down
when the earth spins round?
Cause we're wrapped up tight
in alibis. Why don't we all fall down
when the earth spins round?
Cause we mistake lies for good advice.
I'd like to tell you a tenth of what i feel
I'm busy sleeping on your magnetic wheel.
The main league of scientists are talking till
They're blue in the face. They gave the world a clock...three seconds are what we've got
To run our of human race...run our of human race. CHORUS
If we lived our lives like we had three more seconds to live...they be no question just give and give and give and give and give and give and give and give and give and... CHORUS.
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fastarrow Posted 10:24 pm
21 Mar 2006
It's a cool place and they say it gets colder,
You're bundled up now wait till you get older.
But the meteor men beg to differ,
Judging by the hole in the satellite picture.
The ice we skate, is getting pretty thin,
The water's getting warm, so we might as well swim.
My world's on fire, how about yours?
That's the way I like it and I'll never get bored.
I think the last line sums up how some people feel?
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luvanani Posted 2:25 am
23 Mar 2006
Bargain buildings, weights and pullies
Feathers hit the ground before the weight can leave the air
Buy the sky and sell the sky and tell the sky and tell the sky
Don't fall on me
(what is it up in the air for)
(it's gonna fall)
Fall on me
(if it's there for long)
(it's gonna fall)
Fall on me
(it's over it's over me)
(it's gonna fall)
There's the progress we have found
(when the rain)
A way to talk around the problem
(when the children reign)
Building towered foresight
(keep your conscience in the dark)
Isn't anything at all
(the statues in the park)
Buy the sky and sell the sky and bleed the sky and tell the sky
(repeat chorus)
Don't fall on me
Well I could keep it above
But then it wouldn't be sky anymore
So if I send it to you you've got to promise to keep it whole
Buy the sky and sell the sky and lift your arms up to the sky
And ask the sky and ask the sky
(repeat chorus, etc.)
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ourearthmusic Posted 5:09 pm
29 Mar 2006
Artist: Ten Hands
Song: "The Greenhouse Effect"
Album: "Kung Fu...That's What I Like"
Three men in offices with air conditioning
Who think in triplicate and dream in $$$
They are the rule makers, they are the gameplayers
They think that they will be here 'til the end of time
There is a president who has a cabinet
They think defensively and dream of deficits
Till the end of time..
They think that they will be here till the end of time..
There are boys and girls in college with two story townhouses
With paid utilities and late model sports cars
There are people in churches with blind religions
Who dictate morals to chosen people
There are men with educations and women with degrees
Who use their brains for money to build a life of ease
There are "sensitive young artists" with high ideals
Who recognize the danger and stuff their ears with fame
(TAKE IT, GARY!!!!)
[There is every kind of person, there is every kind of pain
There's a different life for all of us, it all ends up the same
There are smokestacks belching chemicals into the atmosphere
And God is smiling down on them
The intent was always clear
It turns out that what's important
Is not what it seems to be
'Cus in the end there's still the sun, the moon, the earth, the sky, the sea...]
...the end of time
The casette is no longer available (a later album is on amazon.com). Here is a review of this album:
http://www.mp3.com/albums/499796/reviews.html
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Rebecca F Posted 2:15 pm
08 Jan 2007
Best,
Rebecca F.
http://www.myspace.com/RebeccaFmusic
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Rebecca F Posted 2:22 pm
08 Jan 2007
And guess what? The song's called GLOBAL WARMING, and it's ALL ABOUT global warming! Why do you guys have to try so hard? (This in response to David Roberts' attempt to "gravitas" a very vague reference in a Postal Service song).
Lyrics below.
Best,
Rebecca F.
http://www.myspace.com/RebeccaFmusic
GLOBAL WARMING
REBECCA F. 2005
Landslides in L.A., a deluge of rain
pours on the land like it's filling a drain.
Snow covers Colorado two feet high,
the Minister of Truth said it's been a wild summer.
But it's October 15!
Floods all along the Jersey coast,
Massachusetts dams, damn near broke.
Monster hurricanes every nine days.
The weatherman says, "Well that's just the way it goes."
But in the Arctic Sea the temperature grows!
CHORUS
Don't you know there's no such thing as global warming?
The air temperature rises five degrees every day!
All the ice caps melting are just a dream!
So don't believe the facts you read, they don't prove a thing!
I got a plant box on my balcony,
the flowers are annuals:
they're supposed to croak in spring.
But every damn winter they survive,
so by the summer they're still alive!
Though the label says in frost they die!
As bird flu spreads across the sky!
And people live now till they're 85!
And plastics waste in junkyards miles high!
And we don't got a plan for all the survivors!
And no one penalizes SUV drivers!
But the louder we scream seems the more the beehivers
walk on city streets with their goddamn blinders!
CHORUS
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midoki Posted 6:12 pm
21 Sep 2008
Return to a land called Paraiso
A place where a dying river ends
No birds there fly over Paraiso
No space allows them to endure
The smoke that screens the air
The grass that's never there
And if I could see a single bird, what a joy
I try to write some words and create a single song
To be heard by the rest of the world
I live in this land called Paraiso
In a house made of cardboard floors and walls
I learned to be free in Paraiso
Free to claim anything I see
Matching rags for my clothes
Plastic bags for the cold.
And if empty cans were all I have, what a joy
I never fight to take someone else's coins
And live with fear like the rest of the boys
Paraiso, help me make a stand
Paraiso, take me by the hand
Paraiso, make the world understand
That if I could see a single bird, what a joy
This tired and hungry land could expect
Some truth and hope and respect from the rest of the world
(Instrumental)
And if empty cans were all I have, what a joy
I never fight to take someone else's coins
And live with fear like the rest of the boys
Paraiso, help me make a stand
Paraiso, take me by the hand
Paraiso, make the world understand
That if I could see a single bird, what a joy
This tired and hungry land could expect
Some truth and hope and respect from the rest
Of the world...
Paraiso, help me make a stand
Paraiso, take me by the hand
Paraiso, make the world understand
That if I could see a single bird, what a joy
This tired and hungry land could expect
Some truth and hope and respect from the rest
Of the world...
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