The Effect of Genre on Environmental Popular Song Lyrics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5429/2079-3871(2026)v16i1.2enKeywords:
song lyrics, Gojira, extreme metal, First Aid Kit, indie folkAbstract
This article examines how musical genre affects the expression of environmental sensibilities in contemporary song lyrics. Heavy metal and indie folk are differently attuned towards environmental themes, and artists in each genre pursue different lyric strategies to address issues like global warming and species extinction. This article examines songs by heavy metal band Gojira and indie folk band First Aid Kit to discover how genre conventions impact the environmental meaning potential of lyrics. Gojira’s songs reveal that the power aesthetics of heavy metal can accommodate explicitly environmental lyrics. First Aid Kit show that indie folk songs can rely on an associative poetics generating environmental nostalgia even without direct lyrical reference to environmental issues. Attention to how meaning is generated on the level of genre will expand our understanding of the role of song lyrics in promoting environmentalism to music fans.
References
Bibliography
Andersen, I. V. and K. Fløttum. 2022. ‘Adults who fail the next generations and children who refuse to give up’: The story about climate change as a battle between the generations. In D. Höllein and A. Wieders-Lohéac Eds. Fridays for Future. Sprachliche Perspektiven auf eine globale Bewegung. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag: 17-38.
Bamle, H. H. –
Indie-Folk Music and the Quest for Personal Authenticity. In O. Karlsen and B. Markussen Eds. Sanglyrikk. Teori – Metode – Sjangrer. Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press: 457-501.
The Force of Environmental Lyrics in Pop Songs: The Case of Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach. Popular Music and Society 47 (1): 64-80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2023.2297351
Anti-Pastoral and the Prophetic Mode in Moddi’s Climate Songs. Ecozon@ 15 (2): 218-235. http://dx.doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2024.15.2.5177
Beck, U. 2016. World at Risk. Cambridge: Polity.
Bernstein, C., Ed. 1998. Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brackett, D. 2016. Categorizing Sound: Genre and Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oakland: University of California Press.
Buell, L. 1995. The Environmental Imagination. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Coleman, C. 2017. Indie Folk’s Bowerbirds: Nostalgia and Contemporary Singer-Songwriters. In J. Williams and K. Williams Eds. The Singer-Songwriter Handbook. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic: 223-38.
Dalzell, B. 2005. Interview: Gojira. Spirit-of-Metal.com. October 2005. (Accessed 30. Aug. 2024).
Eckstein, L. 2010. Reading Song Lyrics. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.
Fabbri, F. 1981. A Theory of Musical Genres. Two Applications. In D. Horn and P. Tagg Eds. Popular Music Perspectives. Göteborg and Exeter: International Association for the Study of Popular Music: 52-81. https://www.tagg.org/xpdfs/ffabbri81a.pdf Accessed 4 March 2026.
Ferris, D. X. 2009. #9: Gojira – From Mars to Sirius. Metalsucks.net, 24 June 2009. https://www.metalsucks.net/2009/06/24/9-gojira-from-mars-to-sirius/ Accessed 12 March 2026.
Frith, S. 1996. Performing Rites: Evaluating Popular Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Frow, J. 2015. Genre. London and New York: Routledge.
Furuseth S. and R. Hennig. 2023. Økokritisk Håndbok. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
Garrard, G. 2012. Ecocriticism. London and New York: Routledge.
Heise, U. K. 2008. Sense of Place and Sense of Planet. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Hesmondhalgh, D. 1999. Indie: The Institutional Politics and Aesthetics of a Popular Music Genre. Cultural Studies 13 (1): 34-61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/095023899335365
Holt, F. 2007. Genre in Popular Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ingram, D. 2010. The Jukebox in the Garden: Ecocriticism and American Popular Music Since 1960. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.
Kahn-Harris, K. 2007. Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Kock, C. 2008. Retorisk poetik. Åstorp: Retorikforlaget.
Kramer, L. 2002. Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Lena, J. C. 2012. Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lindhardt, J. 1989. Tale og skrift – to kulturer. København: Munksgaard.
Lucas, O. R. 2019. ‘Shrieking soldiers … wiping clean the earth’: hearing apocalyptic environmentalism in the music of Botanist. Popular Music 38 (3): 481-497. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0261143019000308
Mitchell, T. 2017. Music and Landscape in Iceland. In F. Holt and A. Kärjä Eds. The Oxford Handbook of Popular Music in the Nordic Countries. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 145-61.
Moore, A. F. 2012. Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song. New York: Routledge.
Morris, M. 2014. Negative dialectics in music: Adorno and heavy metal. European Journal of Cultural Studies 17 (5): 549-566. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367549413515257
Morton, T. 2016. Dark Ecology. New York: Columbia University Press.
Negus, K. 1999. Music Genres and Corporate Cultures. New York: Routledge.
Novak, J. 2012. Performing the Poet, Reading (to) the Audience: Some Thoughts on Live Poetry as Literary Communication. Journal of Literary Theory 6 (2): 358-382. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2012-0003
Pedelty, M. 2012. Ecomusicology. Rock, Folk, and the Environment. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Petrusich, A. 2021. Genre is Disappearing. What Comes Next? The New Yorker, 8. March. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/genre-is-disappearing-what-comes-next Accessed 12 March 2026.
Phillipov, M. 2012. Death Metal and Music Criticism: Analysis at the Limits. Plymouth: Lexington Books.
Rehding, A. 2011. Ecomusicology between Apocalypse and Nostalgia. Journal of the American Musicological Society 66 (2): 409-14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jams.2011.64.2.409
Roy, W. G. 2010. How Social Movements Do Culture. International Journal of Politics Culture and Society 23 (2): 85-98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10767-010-9091-7
Shank, B. 2014. The Political Force of Musical Beauty. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Skylar, B. 2012. Environ-Metal: Where green is the new black. Peoplesworld.org, 12 October. https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/environ-metal-where-green-is-the-new-black/ Accessed 12 March 2026.
Small, C. 1998. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Størvold, T. –
Dissonant Landscapes: Music, Nature, and the Performance of Iceland. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Confronting Climate Change in Popular Music Texts: Nostalgia, Apocalypse, Utopia. In M. Dines, G. D. Smith, and S. Rambarran Eds. Handbook of Popular Music Methodologies. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect: 590-605.
Todorov, T. 1973. The Fantastic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
van Poecke, N. 2017. Authenticity Revisited: The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Independent Folk Music in the Netherlands (1993-Present). Ph.D. Erasmus University, Rotterdam. https://pure.eur.nl/en/publications/authenticity-revisited-the-production-distribution-and-consumptio/ Accessed 12 March 2026.
Walser, R. 1993. Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Weinstein, D. 2006. Rock protest songs: so many and so few. In I. Peddie Ed. The Resisting Muse: Popular Music and Social Protest. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate: 3-16.
Weston, D., L. Coutts and M. Petz. 2021. Music and the twenty-first century eco-warrior. SN Social Sciences 1 (9): 245. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s43545-021-00253-z
Discography
First Aid Kit. –
a. “Wolf”, The Lion’s Roar, Wichita Recordings, 23 January, Europe.
b. "The Lion’s Roar", The Lion’s Roar, Wichita Recordings, 23 January, Europe.
Gojira. –
a. “From Mars”, From Mars to Sirius, Listenable Records, 27 September, France.
b. “Ocean Planet”, From Mars to Sirius, Listenable Records, 27 September, France.
c. “Global Warming”, From Mars to Sirius, Listenable Records, 27 September, France.
d. “Flying Whales”, From Mars to Sirius, Listenable Records, 27 September, France.
e. “In the Wilderness”, From Mars to Sirius, Listenable Records, 27 September, France.
f. “World to Come”, From Mars to Sirius, Listenable Records, 27 September, France.
g. “To Sirius”, From Mars to Sirius, Listenable Records, 27 September, France.
h. “Where Dragons Dwell”, From Mars to Sirius, Listenable Records, 27 September, France.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 IASPM Journal
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright, while licensing their work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
