Al Gore – the American Vice President was honored with the Nobel Prize for his effort to raise awareness on Environmental issues in 2007. His greatest work was the documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” that had showed the damage mankind has done to the earth. But Gore was not the first to raise awareness on the need to ‘protect environment’. It was Michael Jackson who disseminated this message to millions of world inhabitants through his major musical hit ‘the Earth Song’.
The song starts with a long tracking shot through a lush rainforest that then cuts to a scene showing a somber Jackson walking through a scorched, desolate landscape. The environmental emoting then comes thick and fast: dead elephants, evil loggers, belching smoke stacks, snared dolphins, seal clubbing, and hurricane winds. MJ asks about elephants – whether they lost their trust to humans, pays attention to crying whales due to the man who ravages the seas and talks about forest trails that are destroyed. Then he throws the plea to reverse the harmful acts committed by mankind. It was creatively presented in the video by playing the scenes in reverse order. ‘Earth Song’ is indeed a very rare hit with a powerful message about humankind’s impact on the environment and plea to everybody to start acting to reverse the damage.
The songs effectiveness is testified by its sales records. More than a million copies of the Earth Song were sold and it had become the biggest selling UK single standing ahead of MJ’s popular albums Thriller or Billie Jean. But it wasn’t only the English fans that song reached out. ‘Music’ has no cultural and lingual barriers and the 6 minutes video interprets the song to everybody – even to those who do not understand English. Most of the local Environmental forums I attended had played the ‘Earth Song’ which proves this fact. It has become the Global Environment Anthem.
I enjoyed the song since its release in November, 1995. But I never bothered to find out who had done those sensitive lyrics until yesterday. Such a sensitive masterpiece could be written by an Environmental sensitive person. I was shocked that the Lyrics too were done by Michel Jackson. How a punk like MJ could have done the Greatest Environmental Song..? But it was enough for me to realize that MJ was more than a punk or simply a King of Pop - He was an Environmental Sensitive man.
This is what MJ said about his ‘Earth Song’ which testifies his love to mother earth – “I remember writing Earth Song when I was in Austria, in a hotel. I was feeling so much pain and so much suffering of the plight of the Planet Earth. And for me, this is Earth's Song, because I think nature is trying so hard to compensate for man's mismanagement of the Earth. And with the ecological unbalance going on, and a lot of the problems in the environment, I think earth feels the pain, and she has wounds, and it's about some of the joys of the planet as well. But this is my chance to pretty much let people hear the voice of the planet.”
Though MJ is no more, his earth song will echoes the need to heal earth’s wounds.. MJ will be there forever asking mankind “Did you ever stop to notice; The crying Earth, the weeping shores?”
click the link for lyrics
http://www.lyrics007.com/Michael%20Jackson%20Lyrics/Earth%20Song%20Lyrics.html
Watch the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqeADZgjtpY
