The correlation between pop music and environmental activism has become a growing subject of interdisciplinary research. Recent approaches focus on the environmental impact of music production (Brennan and Devine Reference Brennan and Devine2020; Devine Reference Devine2019), the pedagogical potential of pop music within education for sustainable development (Prior Reference Prior2022) and the mutual influences of pop music and environmental movements (Ingram Reference Ingram2010). Approaches from political science focus on how nature concepts are (re)constructed through pop music (Philipp Reference Philipp, Flath, Jacke and Troike2022, Reference Philipp2023, Reference Philipp and Dinis2024), whereas ecomusicology contributions analyse the intersections of music and sound (Dawe and Allen Reference Dawe and Allen2016) and provide ethnographical case studies on how people musically interpret their changing environments (McDowell et al. Reference McDowell, Borland, Dirksen and Tuohy2021).
Despite this growing body of research, the interplay of gender identity and environmental communication through pop music has not yet provoked scientific debate. The topic requires attention, as femininity and metaphors of motherhood have always determined the perception of nature and environment. With the rise of the ecological movements, these conceptions have also accompanied the increase of environmental awareness, political eco-activism and nature conservation regimes. Responding to the interrelatedness of ecological crises and gender conflicts, ecofeminism has emerged as an academic, intellectual and social movement to explore the intersections of environmentalism and feminism and to draw on a feminist position to redesign humanity's relationship with nature. The question thus is: to what extent is ecofeminism a topic and challenge of pop music? How does ecofeminist pop music deal with today's environmental conflicts? And in what way do transgender and non-binary pop artists contribute to environmental communication through music? To approach these open questions is the core intention of this article.
On a methodological level, analysing the relation of ecofeminism and pop music can imply to focus on a singer's or producer's intentions and identify an environmental or ecofeminist agenda. The investigation can also concentrate on the social and political impact of pop music by evaluating effects and influences that derive from musical experiences. Going beyond these methodological approaches to analyse manifest phenomena, the following analysis is primarily focusing on latent structures. This approach is based on the consideration that pop music and its ecological references, although often a space of activism, agitation or interest management, is first of all a complex sounding board for societal conflict transformation. Politics, entertainment and aesthetic experiences constantly interact in pop music, often unintentionally: a mixture of knowledge resources that open up a hybrid mirror of latent, unresolved, merely negotiated societal problems. For German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, the challenge of latency is about observing others with particular interest in what they fundamentally are unable to observe (Luhmann Reference Luhmann1990, p. 90). According to Luhmann, the artistic and scientific techniques of modernity gave rise to a kind of public communication that primarily aims to reveal hidden layers, latent structures and unprocessed depths of a society. Especially, arts and sciences open a path to observe, analyse and understand the ‘observed observers’ in their motivations, interests, desires and longings. For Luhmann, latency, seen from that perspective, is a core problem of the social production of knowledge in modernity (Luhmann Reference Luhmann1990, p. 91). Although ecological topics are broadly discussed in public, many facets of environmental challenges such as gender-related aspects, transgender perspectives and sexist conventions still flow more or less invisibly.
Departing from these basic premises, this essay approaches pop music as a sounding board of hidden social conflicts demanding further public negotiation. The selected musical examples are less seen as agents of advocacy or political activity for change (which in some cases they are), but rather as an artistic code to process latent structures and their inherent conflicts around environment and gender identity. Following this path, this article addresses the idea of ecofeminism and its motivations and subsequently discusses exemplary ecofeminist themes in pop music productions, focusing on the trope of violence and vulnerability, the affirmation of interdependence and togetherness, the conflictful negotiation of gender and environmental norms through riot and empowerment, and finally perspectives from transecology and gender queerness. The concluding section summarises and discusses the findings.
Assuming that the ecofeminist debate is far more complex than can be outlined in this essay, the following overview is based on a subjective selection of songs which is not representative. Owing to their popularity and market dominance, only pop music works with English-language lyrics were included in the following overview. As this article focuses on latency through lyrics and sounds, the analysis deals exclusively with music with lyrics. The production period of the works that were taken into consideration ranged from 1961 to 2023. All examples originate from the Global North and are primarily aimed at audiences in this region. The further selection was compiled through the author's teaching experiences at universities, numerous discussions with students and recent research contributions. The aim of this essay is not to cover the entire spectrum of ecofeminist sustainability communication through music, but to focus on selected examples by means of a textual and contextual analysis in order to better understand the presence of ecofeminist positions in pop culture.
1. Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism serves as an umbrella term for research, policy and activist approaches that address feminist, women and gender-relevant aspects in their relatedness to ecological issues and environmental conflicts. The term arose in the 1970s and was coined by French author and citizen rights activist Françoise d'Eaubonne. Ecology, a science that seeks to explore the relations of living beings, included the relations between sexes, Eaubonne (Reference Eaubonne and Hottell2022, p. 197) insisted. The environmental crisis was a result of failed power structures: ‘a problem of men; not only because it is men who hold world power […]; but because power is, at the lower level, allocated in such a way as to be exercised by men over women’ (Eaubonne Reference Eaubonne and Hottell2022, p. 208). The only solution to secure a stable future was ‘to tear the planet away from the male today in order to restore it for humanity of tomorrow. […] The planet placed in the feminine will flourish for all’ (Eaubonne Reference Eaubonne and Hottell2022, p. 221 f.) (Figure 1).
The theorist who coined the term: Franceoise d'Eaubonne viewed ecofeminism as the key to ensuring a fulfilling future for all people. © ER/DR/Manon Aubel
The basic observation behind Eaubonne's postulation was the fact that the repression of women closely correlates with the repression of nature. Both ways of suffering appeared interconnected under the common rule of patriarchy, creating a bond between environmental and women's movements and their history of shared oppression (King Reference King, Jaggar and Bordo1992, p. 116). Nature and women were perceived as a resource to satisfy human needs, but their social function was considered irrelevant in national accounting systems (Gaard Reference Gaard2017, p. 20). Therefore, also from an economical viewpoint, the problem of limited natural resources turned out to be linked to gender-specific injustice: although environmental crises and climate change affect all humans, their ‘drivers and effects are not gender-neutral’ (Dankelman Reference Dankelman and Dankelman2010, p. 61). Beside the work on theoretical foundations and claims, ecofeminism became an activist movement to reflect the linkages between humanity's abusive use of nature and men's exploitation of female bodies, observing gender roles, human-nature relationships and power imbalances (Davis and Craven Reference Davis and Craven2016, p. 96). Prominent female leaders of environmental movements such as Medha Paktar, Wangari Maathai, Marina Silva and Petra Kelly have shown that it is particularly women who embody crucial tensions of the environmental movements, such as the struggle between passion and institutionalisation (Radkau Reference Radkau2014, p. 201). At the core of the movement though, it became clear that an integral relationship with nature can only be achieved through societies in which women are actively involved in economic and political decision-making. The common goal of the manifold strands of ecofeminist debate was to unmask the relationship between women and nature as a consequence of Western dualistic world views, in which women, body and nature are conceptualised as minor (Plumwood Reference Plumwood2003).
On a political level, ecofeminist perspectives were first addressed internationally at the World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985, focusing primarily on the problem of gender-specific vulnerability. Owing to a deliberate ‘feminization of poverty’ (Cuomo Reference Cuomo and Gardiner2017, p. 290), natural disasters and their subsequent impacts in poor regions show a significantly higher death rate of women in relation to men. The reasons were manifold: limited mobility options, less access to relevant information, role-behaviours such as household-related care duties and social norms that hinder women from leaving their home without male accompaniment (Juran and Trivedi Reference Juran and Trivedi2015; Neumayer and Plümper Reference Neumayer and Plümper2007). Precarious, insecure and stressful circumstances render women vulnerable and intensify gender-specific disadvantages as a result of climate change-related extreme events (Dankelman and Jansen Reference Dankelman, Jansen and Dankelman2010). Environmental harm concerns groups which are put in vulnerable conditions with particular force (Warren Reference Warren and Warren2010).
Apart from this diagnosis of vulnerability, international policy increasingly discovered women's functions and potential in development agendas. Among the most prominent applications, principle 20 of the Rio Declaration assigned to women ‘a vital role in environmental management and development’ (United Nations Reference de Janeiro1993, p. 7). A series of international environment regimes contributed linguistically and juridically to functionalise women as environmental managers and political instruments (cf. Cross Reference Cross, Vakoch and Mickey2018, 205 ff.). Women, rather than men, were made responsible for managing natural resources, e.g. through the promotion of efficient cooking stoves in rural areas of the Global South (Currea and Huus-Hansen Reference Currea and Huus-Hansen2018). Ecofeminist criticism on the Rio Declaration's notion of ‘sustainable development’ argued that development, conceptualised by and for Western societies, rather perpetuates and strengthens gender stereotypes (Mellor Reference Mellor1997), ignoring the reasons behind them: gender-based inequality and, among other aspects, the fact that women are still disproportionately responsible for domestic care work. From this perspective, sexual politics in environmental ethics stabilise the marginalisation and devaluation of poor women rather than combatting it (Darling Reference Darling2012; Mies and Shiva Reference Mies and Shiva2014; Shiva Reference Shiva2016). Data-based studies that exclusively focus on behaviour and do not take into account the structural circumstances suggest that women show a more comprehensive awareness of environmental problems and practise a stronger environmental commitment in everyday life (Li et al. Reference Li, Wang and Saechang2022). It is no surprise that the perception of ‘ecological guilt’ (Mallett et al. Reference Mallett, Harrison, Melchiori and Maggino2021) is a stronger concern for women than for men (Muralidharan and Sheehan Reference Muralidharan and Sheehan2018), and feelings such as ‘environmental shame’ put particular pressure on women (Fredericks Reference Fredericks2021, p. 188).
Many feminists therefore have remained distant to the environmental debate, and since its beginning, ecofeminism has struggled against an unfavourable reputation of spiritualism, essentialism and superficiality that has been articulated from representatives of natural science and sociology (MacGregor Reference MacGregor2009, p. 126). The misleading notion that preserving the environment is a particularly feminine responsibility and capability has always provoked strong and manifold criticism (Gaard Reference Gaard2011; Sturgeon Reference Sturgeon1997). While philosopher Hans Jonas, far from ecofeminist impetus, saw ‘the archetype of all responsibility […] powerfully implanted in us by nature or at least in the childbearing part of humanity’ (Jonas Reference Jonas1984, p. 39), ecofeminist research pursued its mission in analysing prevalent associations of women with nature. Meanwhile, research has shown that feminine characteristics associate nature with care, nourishment and life-giving roles such as conception and birth (Hrdy Reference Hrdy1999). It has further explored how common tropes such as Mother Earth or the figure of the witch affect our notion of nature and womanhood. Conversely, men are still associated with culture, being dominant and ultimately overcoming nature (Ortner Reference Ortner, Rosaldo and Bamberger2001). Still today, individuals who engage in green consumption and advocate environmental lifestyles are frequently perceived by others as more ‘feminine’, as shown by empirical research (Brough et al. Reference Brough, Wilkie, Ma, Isaac and Gal2016).
2. Violence and vulnerability
The presence of femininity and maternity in nature is not exclusively an ecofeminist political issue. It extends broadly across genres of cultural practice and pop music styles. Interpreting nature as feminine, vulnerable and in need of protection is apparent in some music productions of specifically male character. In 1974 for example, the male US progressive rock band Kansas, which later found fame through their song ‘Dust in the Wind’, mourns the diminishing powers of female nature: ‘Death of Mother Nature Suits’, produced by talent scout Wally Gold, deplores nature's vanishing beauty as a result of male, violent intervention: ‘We've murdered all her sons and all her daughters/The blood is on our hands, the time has come/And now she's gonna die.’
In 1999, the Southern Rock formation Lynyrd Skynyrd, prominent communicator of ‘white southern manhood’ (Ching Reference Ching and Watts2008), laments the need of female nature for male protection. In ‘Tomorrow's Goodbye’, the band from Florida expresses its concern about nature's weakness: ‘Are we blind to see/That she's dying more each day/And she's crying out to you and me’. In a similar way, the American Grammy-award winning reggae band S.O.J.A. include a reflection on motherly nature as part of their 2002 album Peace in Time of War. Their contribution ‘Mother Earth’, too, deals with male violence against a female nature: ‘They should have seen when we go raping/Our mother Earth who was so fresh and green/[…] If you take the blood out from her vein/Things they never ever gonna be the same’. And Neil Young, who throughout his oeuvre addresses his worries about environmental degradation, complains in ‘She Showed Me Love’ from 2019 about male violence against female nature: ‘You might not believe me (what I see)/I saw old white guys trying to kill mother nature (what I see)’. Defining himself in the song as an ‘old white guy’, Young implicitly confesses himself to be among the abusers.
Far from these specifically male interpretations of nature's vulnerability, in ‘The Rape of the World’ Tracy Chapman considers environmental harm as a form of male violence. The song was released in 1995 as the seventh track on the album New Beginning. Already at this point, Chapman had long since earned a reputation as an outspokenly political songwriter (cf. Julious Reference Julious2018), and New Beginning brought a fresh impetus to this development. In 1988, she headed Amnesty International's Global Human Rights Now! tour together with Sting, Peter Gabriel and Bruce Springsteen. Several of Chapman's songs were performed at all-female artists festivals (Finley Reference Finley2023, p. 139; Jackson Reference Jackson and Smith1992, p. 88). In ‘The Rape of the World’, after a short piano introduction, Chapman starts singing, with in a rich contralto: ‘Mother of us all/Place of our birth/How can we stand aside/And watch the rape of the world’. Backed by congas, acoustic guitar, piano and bass guitar, the singer introduces earth as a female, motherly entity and interprets environmental destruction as a violent male crime: a rape. The tone is lamenting and apocalyptic, as the first verse suggests: ‘This the beginning of the end/This the most heinous of crimes’. Chapman introduces the Earth as a maltreated woman, and the audience is on the witness stand in a courtroom scene: ‘You've seen her stripped mined/You've heard of bombs exploded underground’, says the second verse, while the chorus makes clear: ‘We all are witness’. Chapman presents her thoughts on vulnerability and suffering as an independent Black solo artist, playing her acoustic guitar alone – a type of singer who does not correspond to masculine, sales-promoting stereotypes of female singers (Geffen Reference Geffen2020, 182 f.). Her timbre, a coarse, non-classical contralto defies any clear attribution of male vs. female and thereby operates beyond dichotomous juxtapositions.
3. Interdependence and togetherness
The contrasting trope to deal with gender-related nature conceptions is a narrative of female strength, energy, capability and closeness to nature. Among the male voices of this strand, Australian singer-songwriter Xavier Rudd features his delight in being fuelled by the energy of female nature in his song ‘The Mother’ from 2005. Rudd, who claims to be of Wurundjeri Aboriginal heritage (Jennings Reference Jennings2009, p. 174), sings: ‘Do you feel it in your bones/When she fills you up/Oh yeah she breathes good luck/Mother Earth Mother Earth’. Here, the femininity of nature is associated with origin of vitality, liveliness, zeal and élan. Among the contributions from female artists, in 2022, the Latina battle rapper and B-Girl Natalia Pitti from Orlando, Florida, better known as MyVerse, cooperated with Jazz singer Kristen Warren from Florida in a TED talk on climate action (TED Conferences 2022). Their opening act ‘Mother's Mind’ is a rhymed dialogue between personified humanity and Mother Earth, pleading for togetherness, unity and reconciliation. The maternal strength of nature is the enabling condition for a viable future.
In a much broader way, Icelandic artist Björk offers a whole series of contributions to the interrelatedness of femininity, nature and power. Exploring this linkage fits into an ongoing discourse in science and literature on feminism in the Nordic countries (Leppänen Reference Leppänen and Vakoch2023), and in Iceland in particular (Bjørnsdóttir Reference Bjørnsdóttir, von der Fehr, Rosenbeck and Jonasdottir1998). In several of her works, Björk joins symbols of the environment to the female body and maternal care (Goldin-Perschbacher Reference Goldin-Perschbacher2014, 49 f.), staging her notion of a ‘body-politic relationship with nature’ (Pääkkölä Reference Pääkkölä2017). In 2017, the artist released ‘Utopia’, the title track of her ninth studio album, a collection of avant-garde and folktronica tracks that focus rather on sonic experience than on melody (Petridis Reference Petridis2017). Produced by electronic auteur Alejandra Ghersi Rodríguez a.k.a. Arca, ‘Utopia’ is less about justice, vulnerability or gender equality, than the idea of a feminine capacity to embody (motherly) nature. Birdsong, techno-beat and an all-female flute ensemble from Reykjavik define the sonic experience, accomplishing Björk's approach to understanding sound as an ‘embodied expression of nature’ (Boak Reference Boak, Hall, Dibben, Ingólfsson and Mitchell2019, p. 194). The flute music is introduced as a human analogue of natural birdsong (Empire Reference Empire2017) – a sonic metaphor to interlink the female body with nature (Ursic Reference Ursic2021, p. 247). The lyrics start only after one and a half minutes, sketching an imagined dream-world, a paradisiacal and sensual idyll: ‘Utopia/It's not elsewhere/Let's purify’ and ‘It isn't elsewhere/It's here’, the refrains say. In the end, nature is purified from its human induced toxicity: ‘Huge toxic tumour bulging underneath the ground here/Purify, purify, purify, purify toxicity’ (Figure 2).
The female body as a landscape: Björk within her dreamlike Utopia (video still). Source: YouTube, https://youtu.be/Sqbv7cCM5AI (accessed 2 December 2024)
In her artful music video, directed by the London filmmaking duo Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones, Björk appears as part of a pink, dreamlike, floating and abundant fauna. Female flute players, imaginary creatures and plant-like beings form a harmonious, warm and colourful organism, unified with culture. The artist's world is a fictious biosphere that represents ontological ‘togetherness’ and inseparable belonging (Pääkkölä Reference Pääkkölä2017). Björk herself, introduced only in the second half of the video, lies on the ground and shows a large white orchid flower that grows in the middle of her body. The female body is not just a representation of nature, it is introduced as a landscape itself (Boak Reference Boak, Hall, Dibben, Ingólfsson and Mitchell2019, p. 196). In contrast to prevailing features of Nordic nature in Björk's previous songs, Utopia is about full unification between body and nature (Webb and Lynch Reference Webb and Lynch2010, p. 314), a path to learn from the way that plants are secretly connected in their ‘hidden life’ (cf. Wohlleben Reference Wohlleben2016, 14 f.). Björk interprets herself as a personification of nature (Dibben Reference Dibben2013, p. 70): the female body expresses a form of belonging, a way of becoming one with nature, interlinking the individual with the community, and humanity with the (motherly) Earth.
4. Riot and empowerment
On a pop musical level, the Welsh alternative pop singer Marina Diamandis, popularly known as Marina, contributed to the pop-musical ecofeminist discourse with several of her songs. Touching upon topics such as femininity, patriarchy and misogyny, Diamandis contemplates female empowerment and humanity's relationship with nature (Rokvity Reference Rokvity2021). Her song ‘Man's World’ was first released in 2020 during the global pandemic and became the lead single of her fifth studio album Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land in 2021. Entirely produced by an all-female creative team, the song originated from the singer's idea to deal with the continuous discrimination against women and LGBTQ+ individuals (Bell Reference Bell2020).
‘Man's World’ relies on a limited instrumentation: a piano, played by Marina herself, gives harmony and midtempo rhythm throughout the song and is supported by a synthesiser and, at the climax of the refrain, by a drum kit. Reverb techniques give a particular notion to Marina's expressive voice. Parts of the song are additionally accompanied by female background vocals. The lyrics are full of references to Western historical and present beauty norms: in ‘Cheeks are rosy like a Boucher cherub/I'm a strawberry soda, raise my lashes to heaven’, Marina alludes to French Rococo painter François Boucher (1703–1770) and his pastoral depictions of putti-angels, male and female bodies (cf. Hyde Reference Hyde2006, p. 192). The suffering of women and their oppression through men are connected with the suffering of nature, personified as a mother: ‘Mother Nature's dying, nobody's keeping score/I don't wanna live in a man's world anymore’, the melodic chorus states. Marina communicates nature's and women's suffering as one and emphasises an interrelation between women and nature throughout the song: ‘Stars running in my hair like a waterfall/Clouds in the whites of our eyes’. The ultimate resemblance is seen in the ability to give birth: ‘Don't underestimate the making of life’. Still, a victory of nature over mankind is foreshadowed: ‘The planet has a funny way of stopping a fight’. Marina also evokes the figure of the witch as a woman who does not conform to masculine ideals and detains knowledge that threatens the patriarchy: ‘Century ago you would have called me a witch/Now you just call me a bitch’.
The music video, shot in the Californian Simi Valley desert and directed by image-maker and DJ Alexandra Gavillet, is inspired by 19th century Neo-Classicist aesthetic and Victorian paintings from John William Godward (Rossignol Reference Rossignol2020). It features the artist, supported by six female and non-binary performers in an elegant and graceful choreography. All are dressed in abundantly coloured costumes. Both lyrics and video are a clear plea for recognising the colourful plurality of human bodies. The destruction of the environment is a result of male power. To strengthen non-binary testimonies, diversity and feminism are the natural remedy against ecological crises (Figure 3).
Tired of living in a man's world: Marina's artful performance in the Simi Valley desert (video still). Source: Youtube, https://youtu.be/obxFWNeGDOg (accessed 2 December 2024)
Ecofeminist considerations also determine Marina's ‘Purge the Poison’ from the same album. Released in 2020, the song was re-released 2021 in an alternative version, limited to 4000 record copies, featuring the Russian punk band Pussy Riot, a dissident group mostly known for their unauthorised performance of an anti-Putin song in Moscow's Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in 2012 (Borenstein Reference Borenstein2021, 25f.). Determined by a pulsating and stirring rhythm, ‘Purge the Poison’ is dominated by an electronic guitar, an electronic bass and a hammering drumbeat, background voices and synths. In the lyrics, Marina again impersonates a humiliated but powerful Mother Earth, predicting her ultimate victory: ‘Quarantined, all alone, Mother Nature's on the phone/What have you been doin’? Don't forget, I am your home/Virus come, fires burn, until human beings learn/From every disaster, you are not my master’. Here, too, the trope of the witch vaguely suggests an innate connection of women to nature, presenting a threat to patriarchy and environmental exploitation: ‘All my friends are witches/And we live in Hollywood/Mystical bitches/Making our own sisterhood’. Pussy Riot lead singer Nadyia Tolokonnikova takes over the chorus with a hyperfeminine, childlike, whispery, high-pitched voice, while Marina's timbre provides a much darker, rougher feel. The single cover of the alternative version is coloured green, ambivalently reminding of nature – and of the poison of which the world is to be purged. Both Marina and Nadyia Tolokonnikova are represented, Marina taking a dynamic and combative pose, while Nadyia joins her hands in a pose of prayer. Iconic motifs like a chain, a skull and lips decorate the arrangement. Classically a symbol of oppression and control (Stevens Reference Stevens2001, p. 324), the chain offers a notion of breaking free from restrictions, whereas the lips suggest communication, protest and power through voice. Together, the cover symbols emphasise themes of resistance, liberation, and social critique (Figure 4).
Iconic motifs of liberation and strength: Record cover for Purge the Poison. © Atlantic Records
5. Transecology and gender-queerness
From the 1970s onwards, feminism has gained increasing impetus from marginalised groups such as Black and non-binary people (Guerra Reference Guerra2023, p. 302). Out of this dynamic, the third-wave feminism of the 1990s particularly challenged dualist conceptions of bodies and nature, putting particular emphasis on recognising diversity (Mack-Canty Reference Mack-Canty2004). Later, in the early 2010s, a fourth wave of feminism contributed essentially to link these goals with anti-consumerism and post-capitalist movements (Turner and Brownhill Reference Turner and Brownhill2010; Cochrane Reference Cochrane2013). From this context, the term transecology (Vakoch Reference Vakoch2020) arose to expand the spectrum of ecofeminist debates, arguing that:
trans* is not a thing or being, it is rather the processes through which thing-ness and beingness are constituted. In its prefixial state, trans* is prepositionally oriented – marking the with, through, of, in, and across that make life possible … trans* troubles ontologized states. (Hayward and Weinstein Reference Hayward and Weinstein2015 196 f.)
The English-American transwoman artist Anohni Hegarty, born and previously known as Antony Hegarty from the New York art pop ensemble Antony and the Johnsons, has intensely contributed to the pop musical practice of transecology. Hopelessness, her fifth album (albeit her debut album under the authorship of Anohni) is a collection of plaintive and empathic songs on environmental destruction, surveillance, unjust imprisonment, social disparity, and war, focusing, according to the artist, everybody's ‘complicity […] as a taxpayer, as a consumer, as a passive participant’ (Pareles Reference Pareles2016).
The album's opening track ‘4 Degrees’ is a gloomy, quasi-symphonic contemplation about global warming, combining electro pop aesthetic with crashing drums, opulent synthesiser, booming orchestral horns and sweeping strings. ‘I want to see this world/I want to see it boil./[…] I want to hear the dogs crying for water/I want to see the fish go belly-up in the sea’, Anohni sings in her warm-timbered, vibrating voice, floating between tenor, alto and mezzo-soprano pitch and thereby transgressing conventional notions of gendered voices (Muchitsch Reference Muchitsch2023, 64 f.). The discourse is unmistakably apocalyptic, a sound of disaster (cf. Philipp Reference Philipp2021). Hopelessness narrates the story of violence, patriarchy, homophobia, misogyny and environmental destruction as an intricate problem of lost connection with the natural world (Zukić Reference Zukić2017, p. 156). The album's eighth track, ‘Why Did You Separate me From the Earth?’, turns out to be a sorrowful speech to ‘My God’ and ‘My father’. The song is a kind of prayer or plea, criticising the dualistic divide between the individual and the Earth: ‘You drew lines miles high in steel or nuclear/The forests of Borneo, and white water in your mouth/I don't want your future, and I'll never return/I'll be born into the past, I'm never, never coming home’.
As a transwoman singer, Anohni disputes the binary throughout her songs both aesthetically through her transvocality and in terms of political ecology (Gardner Reference Gardner, Holland and Sprachlen2018, p. 156). The result is a holistic approach to the entire cosmos: ‘I draw a line between the struggle of a gay child in Afghanistan and ecocide – it's all part of the same story’, the artist says in an interview (Purcell Reference Purcell2016). The violence both against the Earth and transgender bodies appears as a result of heteronormative order. Previously in 2010, Anohni spoke about her belief in a ‘kind of feral, empathic connection with the world around’ as constitutive for non-binary and in fact non-boundary bodies: ‘It's the nature of the transgender person just on account of their increased sensitivity to their environment’ (Ferber Reference Ferber2010, p. 48).
In the album's final track, ‘Marrow’, Anohni narrates the story of the Earth as a cancerous woman's body – abused, raped, and plundered – a dark story of despair, caused by an Americanist capitalist culture. ‘Inject, inject, inject me with chemotherapies/Suck the, suck the money out of her face’ says the first verse, intertextually alluding to US wilderness writer Henry Thoreau's famous intention behind living in the woods: ‘I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life’ (Thoreau Reference Thoreau1995, p. 59). The sober, minimalist music video that accompanies the song features American Black female artist Lorraine O'Grady in a close-up. O'Grady, bare shouldered, smiling, red lipped and bejeweled, lip-syncs to the song and thereby serves as an extension of Anohni's trans-gendered vocalic body. The fact that O'Grady's voice is not her own, but belongs to another body may evoke strangeness, alienation and malaise to the listener – a transcorporal experience that intermediates between different bodies. While working on ‘Marrow’, Anohni had intensively dealt with the question of the voice of Mother Earth: what should it sound like? By detaching her voice from her body in the video, she followed the idea that the voice could speak for all people, a voice of whole humankind. Transferring her voice to another, elderly and Black woman, Anohni works on the boundaries between bodies, sex, race and age: a transgression of categorical attributions and Western dualistic confines (Gardner Reference Gardner, Holland and Sprachlen2018, p. 160). Although her album is a testimonial of hopelessness, it is also a plea for a genderqueer reconstruction of the world, addressing all forms of ‘heteronormative violence’ such as the human violence against the natural environment (Zukić Reference Zukić2017, p. 156) (Figure 5).
Lorraine O'Grady lip-syncs Anohni's Marrow (video still). Source: Youtube, https://youtu.be/Rb9XECErMlc (accessed 2 December 2024)
6. Pop music as a sounding board of ecofeminism
The overview shows that ecology-related pop music resonates ecofeminist positions, dealing with environmental crisis experiences and gender conflicts at the same time. The contributions include activism against the idea of a masculinised and patriarchal culture, expressions of suffering from violence within an anthropocentric conquest of nature and boundary work to overcome binary thinking and Western dualism. The full pop musical panorama is even broader than this selection has shown. It covers different genres, thematic strands, aesthetic categories: from male perspectives on vulnerability in indie rock (Bill Madden, ‘Mother’) to hardcore hip-hop (Public Enemy, ‘Don't Give Up the Fight’), alternative metal (Soundgarden, ‘Hands All Over’) and ecofeminist-inspired Nordic art pop (Aurora, ‘The Seed’).
The various approaches that become visible in these productions provide a hybrid mirror of the ecofeminist archipelago. The thematic strand on violence and vulnerability, to start with, focusses on the opposition between a suffering and injured female nature and a potent and devastating male culture. According to this binary juxtaposition, mainly produced by male formations such as Kansas and Lynyrd Skynyrd, environmental degradation is a result of humanity's male power over nature's feminine weakness. Although these musical contributions would essentially offer space for a critical examination of masculinity, they rather deliver linear narrations of traditional gender roles. Choosing a different approach, Tracy Chapman's metaphor of environmental destruction as a ‘rape’ is open for further interpretation. Her song refers to the vulnerability trope, but links it implicitly to a criticism of consumerism and the growth doctrine. As Vandana Shiva points out, the ‘resource-grab that is essential for “growth” creates a culture of rape – rape of the Earth, of local self-reliant economies, of women. […] The rape of the Earth and rape of women are intimately linked – both metaphorically, in shaping world-views, and materially, in shaping women's everyday lives’ (Shiva Reference Shiva, Mies and Shiva2014, p. 16). Beyond the lyrics, Chapman's ecofeminist work is also expressed through her androgynic voice, her Black body and her solo appearance – elements that defy traditional pop musical conventions and male expectations of female singers.
Second, the trope of interdependence and togetherness defines humanity and nature interlinked through close cosmic ties and, disregarding the problems of essentialist approaches, implies a particularly female capability to embody nature. Whereas narrations of Mother Earth develop a conception of an abundant and nurturing nature with humans as her dependent children, Björk stages in her gender performance the essentialist idea of a female-intrinsic connection between women and nature. Everything here breathes the spirit of peaceful unity and wholeness, without any rebellious gestures or signs of revolt. Björk combines female sensuality, maternal aesthetic and conciliation with an implicit criticism against patriarchy and its worldviews.
On a third chain of themes, the communication of riot and empowerment occurs as an alliance between feminist indie pop and punk actors such as Marina Diamandis and Pussy Riot. ‘Man's world’ is about witches and feminist and non-gendered activism as a conflictive, combative demarcation against patriarchy. Marina's implicit plea for giving up binary stereotypes and campaigning for diversity has a prominent counterpart in ecofeminist theory too. As Mies and Shiva point out, ‘the construction of women as the “second sex” is linked to the same inability to cope with difference as seen in the development paradigm that leads to the displacement and extinction of diversity in the biological word. The patriarchal world view sees man as the measure of all value, with no space for diversity, only for hierarchy’ (Mies and Shiva Reference Mies and Shiva2014, p. 164). At the same time, Marina's advocacy for positive otherness and diversity includes postcolonial perspectives: given the global inequalities between North and South, the members of a gender group are by no means homogeneous but different in their opportunities and forms of oppression. Ecofeminism here turns out to be a political aim not just for a general equality between men and women but also for the recognition of heterogeneity and variety. At the same time, the diversity argument emphasises that the women's movement has liberated women and men at the same time: from outdated roles, from restrictive obligations and from oppressive masculine norms. Although the aspect of liberation still focuses on women, it increasingly extends to transgender and male persons as they become more involved (cf. Bola Reference Bola2019).
Finally, the fourth track on transecology and gender-queerness comments on the question of whether transgender bodies hide a particular capability in recognising and solving environmental conflicts, overcoming traditional power structures, transcending boundaries and categorical classifications (cf. Seymour Reference Seymour and MacGregor2017, p. 265). Humanity's rule over nature is fed by the binary juxtaposition of culture and nature, and the same binarity gives rise to many other techniques of exclusion and devaluation of ‘others’: women, trans-gender, non-white, poor and disabled people. These groups have been discriminated and excluded, as their bodies were associated with a secret proximity to nature and especially to wilderness and to the wild. Standing outside of a male, heteronormative culture, transgender groups historically have been systematically devalued and their act of reclaiming and embodying nature is therefore a similarly historical act (Bedford Reference Bedford and Vakoch2020). Anohni's contributions furthermore show that the transvocality of her singing is meaningful beyond all the lyrics, as it negates binary juxtapositions and undermines conventional expectations: Anohni's voice is both performative and relational (cf. Muchitsch Reference Muchitsch2023, p. 60). Trans-voice and trans-identity in song become forms of ecofeminist practice, and queer in this sense is less about sexual orientation but rather ‘an avowal of maverick anti-normative intent’ (Gardner Reference Gardner, Holland and Sprachlen2018, p. 115). Anohni's particular strong point is that she analyses her own involvement in the course of destruction.
A central problem of latency becomes evident through the careless use of metaphors of femininity and motherhood in song lyrics by masculine bands such as Kansas and Lynard Skynard: here, female nature continues to stabilise the position that patriarchal narratives have assigned to it. Nature remains shaped by male gender constructs: weak, under the rule of man, dependent on male protection. Such perspectives on motherhood and female nature are not about nature, but about human (and especially male) needs. In general, the vulnerability trope in pop music carries the risk of insinuating that women are more vulnerable than men, perpetuating social inequality. A critical reading of these songs acknowledges that all people can do violence to nature – just as men can do it to women. The solution is not that women should adopt male norms: they may be feminine, maternal and in some aspects physically weaker in comparison with men – and this is the nature that should be valued. Motherliness per se does not imply weakness. To the contrast, the female body embraces life, interdependence and care – principles that should be made stronger in all human interaction. The pop music contributions particularly by Marina and Anohni and their reference to diversity and non-binary bodies help us to understand that it makes no sense to perceive all women as fundamentally equal in their experience of oppression, regardless of their social, national or group background. Future research of ecofeminism in pop should therefore focus on the differences between cultures and communities, the differences within the gender groups and the contributions of the Global South. In the end, the pop musical examples analysed here show that ecofeminist pop in its overall potential is a space of embodied learning and knowledge (Guerra Reference Guerra2023, p. 301; cf. Allen et al. Reference Allen, Pratt, Le Hunte, Melvold, Doran, Kligyte, Ross, Philipp and Schmohl2023): a way of decomposing hierarchical structures and binary juxtapositions by entertaining a transforming world in its struggle to survive and to embrace the future.
