Climate Change Burns Its Way Up the Pop Charts
Also this week, a fancy new word sums up the moment and This year, I came up with the idea to analyze . Culture can be a bellwether, both signaling where we are heading and, occasionally, helping to steer societys 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 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 , I pared that down to 10 influential songs and spoke with some of the artists. 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 songs lyrics have shown up on and . Its an infectious song, and now you might be humming the chorus (Hey now, youre an all star) to yourself. I wanted to know why Greg Camp, the bands 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. Theres 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. Its 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. Its cool to see how it evolved. And, I must say, Mr. Camps 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, . Every once in a while, you encounter a word that seems very much of the moment. Cassandrafreude is one of those words. And yes, theres a climate change angle. But first, some context. Cassandrafreude is whats called a portmanteau word, a combination of two terms into one, like spork or labradoodle. In this case, the two words are Cassandra and schadenfreude. If you remember your Greek myths, Cassandra had a gift and a curse: she could see the future, but no one would believe her. Schadenfreude, of course, is the German word for feeling pleasure at the misfortune of others. Its a compound of the words for harm and joy. Like all good coinages, its broadly useful. Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, on Twitter: The bitter pleasure of things going wrong in exactly the way you predicted, but no one believed you when it could have made a difference. She added, Ive finally discovered the word that describes how nearly every climate scientist feels. Its that sense familiar to anyone who works in the field of climate change, or writes about it, of giving after after as the levels of greenhouse gases rise in the atmosphere and the effects of a warming world come in with and intensity. Dr. Hayhoe that there is probably a sizeable number of infectious disease experts and public health professionals who feel the same way, a reference to scientific experts whose advice and predictions have been disregarded in the coronavirus pandemic. People with other backgrounds began to chime in, as well. , wrote one. , wrote another. It is important to note one thing that the definition makes clear: the supposedly pleasurable part of Cassandrafreude is anything but. It is a sense, more than anything, of ruefulness, said , senior vice president at , a technology policy and advocacy group in Washington, who coined the term. In 2006, he had warned on his blog that . In an interview he reminded me that pundits and government officials were still providing happy talk about a continued economic boom and a healthy mortgage market. And so, as the Great Recession occurred, he wrote on his blog, It felt like the fall of Troy must have felt, he told me. I was right, and sore about it. He has used the term many times in his writing since then and, in 2013, so that he could link to it whenever he trotted the term out. Its a nifty little word, he said with pride. I cant help but agree, even if, in truth, being right about terrible things generally just leaves me miserable. has been a reporter on the climate desk since 2017. She writes about the science of climate change as well as its social and ecological consequences. is a reporter on the climate desk. In nearly two decades at The Times, he has also covered science, law and technology.