PLAYLIST: Pop Songs That Deal With the Enviornment/Sustainability

[Ryan Goble]

Here's a cool playlist of enviornmental tunes you might use to teach about the enviornment & sustainability issues from Sierra Magazine. I love the Peter Gabriel track from Wall-E

If you're into green/sustainable education and make these issues essential to your curriculum please consider joining our new ecofriendly group Sustainable/Green Education. The Sierra webpage linked all the tracks to Amazon for us, which is cool.

Sing for Tomorrow
"All things move in music and write it," said Sierra Club founder John Muir. Legendary songwriter Oscar Hammerstein echoed that observation: "All the sounds of the earth are like music." No surprise, then, that so many musicians are concerned about the planet--a soothing refrain for anyone who loves music and the outdoors with equal fervor.

An ecoTunes Playlist That Won't Make You Cringe
Gathering from all corners of the musical map--bluegrass ballads, black-metal dirges, pop sarcasm, and classic folk anthems--we herein suggest a set of songs in favor of not trashing the planet, in the order we'd play them on our iPod.

Marvin Gaye, "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" (1971)
The luscious, sad, soulful linchpin to any self-respecting green jukebox.

Johnny Cash, "Don't Go Near the Water" (Boom Chicka Boom version; 1989)
Sparsely backed, employing that sonorous voice of authority, the Man in Black breaks the bad news to children about their environmental inheritance in classic Cash fashion.

Metallica, "Blackened" (1988)
The kings of metal poignantly--if noisily and thrashily--lament Mother Earth's demise.

I See Hawks in L.A., "In the Garden" (2008)
Country rockers from the city of sprawl deliver pretty, rollicking notes about bees, weather, logging, and a paradise "bothered" rather than lost.

The Postal Service, "We Will Become Silhouettes" (2003)
A dulcet, dancey synth-pop indictment of the air we breathe.

Mos Def, "New World Water" (1999)
The rapper-actor drops F-bombs on rising oceans, poisoned water, and imminent shortages.

Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi" (1970)
Another classic, denouncing pesticides, overdevelopment, and painful breakups.

Ted Nugent, "Great White Buffalo" (1978)
Sweet guitar licks and the Nuge's hunter-conservationist take on species extinction.

Wolves in the Throne Room, "www.amazon.com/Vastness-And-Sorrow/dp/B000WECVH4+%22Wolves+in+the+t...;" target="_blank">Vastness and Sorrow" (2007)
Gorgeous black-metal onslaught by Earth First!-leaning farmsteaders. Unintelligible lyrics paint a scorched, wasted earth.

The Roots, "Rising Down" (2007)
A hip-hop general survey of worldwide malaise hits global warming and not-so-natural disasters.

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, "Johnny Appleseed" (2001)
Rousing (and sage) advice about resource management from a punk-rock icon.

Jean Ritchie, "Black Waters" (1971)
The Appalachian folksinger calls out the coal companies in this (unfortunately) timeless bittersweet tune.

Talking Heads, "(Nothing But) Flowers" (1988)
Playfully sarcastic, joyously upbeat, David Byrne's visions of a carless, fast-food-free future in which plant life overtakes factories and freeways.

Peter Gabriel, "Down to Earth" (2008)
Just hearing this slick piece of pop from the WALL-E soundtrack triggers enviro-endorphin sunbursts in the brain.

--Lynn Rapoport

Full article from the Sierra Magazine here.