After exploring artistic renderings of utopian visions of human relationships with the Earth last week, I became curious about how such imaginations have materialized in other categories of pop culture (specifically, music). Specifically, Billie Eilish’s “all the good girls go to hell” (2019) is a particularly poignant visualization of a dystopian (not so distant) future, in which the human race has ignored the concerns of climate change and ensured our eventual destruction. The lyrics of the song as they stand alone are disturbing, as Eilish notes that man is “poisoning themselves now” and questions “Man is such a fool / Why are we saving him?” Yet coupled with the affecting visuals of the music video, the song takes on a whole different tone.

Eilish, dressed as a fallen angel who has landed in a tar pit and begun to trudge through the streets of Los Angeles, eventually catches fire as everything burns around her.

A burning message (pun intended) to call attention to the dire consequences of climate change for our generation, Eilish makes a direct and haunting appeal to the ignorance and apathy too often directed towards questions of our response to climate change, reciting “Hills burn in California / my turn to ignore ya / don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”

While in my search, I found songs dating back to the 60s and 80s, with Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” (1968) and the Talking Head’s “Nothing But Flowers” (1988) lamenting on a future in which there are no more “blue skies” or “shopping malls,” Eilish’s grim visions of a dystopian future, in the context of what we know about the growing climate catastrophe today, rings all the more close to the heart.