Global warming: #2 on the pop charts

Thom Yorke's solo album focuses on climate change

Posted by Kit Stolz (Guest Contributor) at 12:05 PM on 21 Jul 2006

Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead, is not the first pop artist to find success with a song about global warming.

Andrew Bird, a superb violinist and exciting new rock musician with a long-term interest in weather systems, already has an alternative hit with his Tables and Chairs, a soaring song with a great chorus about global warming:

so don't, don't you worry, about the atmosphere
or any sudden pressure change
cause i know
that it's starting to get warm in here
and things are starting to get strange

But Yorke is the first rock star to top the charts with a record focused on global warming, hitting number two this week with his new album The Eraser. Although usually loathe to discuss the meaning of his often-inscrutable songs with the press, he openly described to the L.A. Times what inspired the record:

In the paper one day, [Friends of the Earth activist] Jonathan Porritt was basically dismissing any commitment that the working government has toward addressing global warming, saying that their gestures were like King Canute trying to stop the tide. And that just went "kaching" in my head. It's not political, but that's what I feel is happening. We're all King Canutes, holding our hands out, saying, "It'll go away. I can make it stop." No, you can't.

This became the central image in The Eraser -- a king futilely attempting to hold back waves of disaster, drawn from a print by Yorke's friend Stanley Donwood.

On the Radiohead site, Yorke links to a new climate change campaign called The Big Ask, and in his usual offhand but factual manner, talks about how the issue has hit him personally:

THIS IS WHAT IM DOING NOW. this is big shit.this is the big ask. about climate change the stuff that wakes me up at 4am in a sweat, ....is that normal? i worry too much, apparently......THOMx

The record, constructed on a laptop, is electronica and sounds a little strange. Yorke aptly describes it as "bits and bobs and shreds of all sorts of random chaos." But it frames Yorke's thin but charismatic quaver -- the voice of anxiety in our times -- extremely well. "A million engines in neutral," he sings. "The tick tock tick of a ticking timebomb."

In his lyrics, Yorke elegantly describes the central reality of global warming, the natural fact that we as a culture have the most trouble accepting -- its cloudy blend of invisibility and inevitability. "It's relentless / Invisible / Indefatigable / Indisputable / Undeniable."

As reviews (of both the solo album and the live version with Radiohead) have said, it's a strong record: alluring, unsettling, oddly beautiful. (Here's a link to a solo acoustic performance of "The Clock," which begins "Time is running out ...")

Will it help? Who knows? After being criticized by the Sunday Times of London for hypocrisy because Radiohead's last tour was far from carbon neutral, Yorke told The Observer:

No one's going to come out of this dirt-free; I don't come out of it dirt-free. It's basically [about] having to make a decision whether to do nothing or try to engage with it in some way, knowing that it's flawed. It's convenient to project that back on to someone personally and say they're a hypocrite. It's a lot easier to do that than actually do anything else. And yeah, that stresses me out, because I am a hypocrite. As we all are.

Facing facts: It's a start.

For story: Global warming: #2 on the pop charts
3 Comments | Post a Comment

Ice age comin'...

"Although usually loath to discuss the meaning of his often-inscrutable songs with the press, he openly described..."

Thom Yorke has a lot of lyrics which seem to be about alienation due to technology, and nobody ever stopped using a cell phone because they heard a Radiohead song; if anything, they got a Radiohead ringtone. Forgive me if I'm dubious as to whether this album will have any impact, but at least it's a good sign, in a way.

I was much more encouraged by the recent poll: when more people in this country believe in anthropogenic global warming than evolution, that is real progress.

by TariffDude at 1:34 PM on 21 Jul 2006

Global Warming song by a U.S. woman!

Hey Thom Yorke, I'm a nobody, but I'm with you! My song GLOBAL WARMING was written October 15, 2005. For an interesting "across the pond" take, hear GLOBAL WARMING at:

www.myspace.com/RebeccaFmusic.

Lyrics follow.

Best,
Rebecca F.

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

by Rebecca F at 3:42 PM on 11 Jan 2007

rock and ecology

Greetings from Greece. We see that uou try to make a similar effort like us, collecting songs about global warming. We have created a similar blog "Rock and Ecology" in English language in the web adress:
http://rockandecology.blogspot.com/

hope you enjoy it and find it interesting. We have already took many ideas from this topic about environmental songs for future posts

And we put here a metal song that you did't include:

Testament-Greenhouse effect-Album:Practice what you preach

Fools the ones who stray, the rain forest burns away
Know what to believe, this is the air we breathe
So the world we know is dying slow in South America
Flames are burning down, all the trees to the ground

Time is running low, we can't stay no more
Wealth these people see, fight for eternity
Lies they televise paid by their government
There on! It's lingers on
And they don't even care in they...

Seal the Planet's fate
Crimes they perpetrate
Wasting precious land
It's time to take a stand

Our only hope to breathe again
To stop the madness closing in
What will we do when all is lost?
Environmental holocaust... repeat

Foes, these people go, someone destroyed their home
Plagued with disease, left praying on their knees
Laws protect the land, social justice in demand
Smoke it fills the air into the atmosphere
Now it's time to see a cycle of a tragedy
On! It lingers on, and they don't even care if they

Seal the Planet's fate
Crimes they perpetrate
Wasting precious land
It's time to take a stand

Our only hope to breathe again
To stop the madness closing in
What will we do when all is lost?
Environmental holocaust...

Listen it in youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VHLtdpiBHE

by candiru at 1:35 AM on 12 May 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.