The following list includes the biggest singles from the era that show a distinct sense of ecological concern. To make the list, the songs had to have appeared somewhere between 1 and 130 on Billboard's pop singles chart at any point from 1970 to 1974 and contain at least one line expressing concern for the air, the water, or the land. Not included here are any of the numerous songs that merely celebrate country life or any ecologically-oriented non-charting album tracks, however well-known. All of the titles are ordered according to the date of their first appearance in Billboard. This is because it's common for any one of these to be written about as "the first," but no, the subject was a happening thing back then.
Pollution gets listed as one of the social ills Jesus can help fix. ("If you breathe air you'll die/ Perhaps you wonder the reason why.") Co-writer Charlie Allen is the group's lead vocalist.
This vocal-troupe version of Joni Mitchell's song about paved-over parking lots, tree museums and DDT charted a week earlier than her own more natural-sounding record. It also charted higher. Side B covers a Free Design song.
The environmentalism is implicit here ("Anybody see the sky weeping tears for the ocean?"). The Canadian group's follow up hit, "Share the Land," had a made-to-order Earth Day title, but the lyrics focused instead on communal hand-holding.
(Also see nos. 2 and 25.) A John Wilson animation of this record aired on the popular Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour on August 8, 1971. In the mid-nineties a renewed preoccupation with the song took hold thanks to a shopping mall-friendly remix EP, soundtrack placements, and a charting cover version by Amy Grant. In 2003 Counting Crows pecked at it some more for another charting cover version.
This one stands apart from other frolics in the hay by painting a grim picture in the chorus: "Before the breathin' air is gone/ Before the sun is just a bright spot in the night time/ Out where the rivers like to run/ I stand alone and take back something worth remembering."
The first single from Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, the final album for the classic lineup of this inventive Los Angeles group, satirizes life in the city, saying that "the air I breathe and the water I drink is selling me short..."
Blue Mink was a British group that included songwriter Roger Cook and bass guitar ace Herbie Flowers, and their only US hit referenced "people trying not to choke...breathing the smoke," black clouds and "troubled waters." (I'm a fan of the B-side, written by the band's keyboardist Roger Coulam and featuring Flowers's rapid-fire bass fills.)
Ray Davies pokes fun at the nature movement by lauding the lifestyle of primates. Musically, he draws from the Caribbean trend. ("I look out my window but I can't see the sky/ 'Cause the air pollution is a-fogging up my eyes.")
Wherein a solution isn't offered, just yearned for. ("The first thing I saw this morning was polluted skies/ Some people walking around with tears in their eyes.")
The "Indiana Wants Me" singer-songwriter offers up one of pop's catchiest whistle choruses. ("Cities eating up the land/ Progress eating up the planet")
Spirit's final charting single, although not especially detailed, was reportedly prompted by an environmental conversation between band member Randy California and a friend.
In their hazy way, the "One Toke Over the Line" duo from Kansas City zeroes in on 1916 as industrial Year One in Crete, Nebraska. ("Fifty-five years of pollution/ Everybody knows how the puzzle was laid/ But can anyone recall the solution.") The B-side of the single is their version of "Seems Like a Long Time" written by another Kansas City songwriter named Ted Anderson. Rod Stewart would later cover the song on his Every Picture Tells a Story album.
The ultimate ecology record is this one, from top to bottom. The song on the B-side called "Sad Tomorrows" is actually an earlier version of the What's Going On album's "Flying High (In the Friendly Sky)."
Alvin Lee's repeating guitar riff is both unsettling and seductive - one of rock's greats. But the opening lyrics, whatever the intention, sound like Axl Rose source material ("Everywhere is freaks and hairies, dykes and fairies, tell me where is sanity"). Pollution makes the grievance list in verse three.
This take-responsibility proclamation was a highlight of the Staple Singers' classic early seventies output. ("Keep talkin' 'bout the president/ Won't stop air pollution/ Put your hand on your mouth when you cough/ That'll help the solution.")
Like with Three Dog Night's "Out in the Country," the jazz-rock army Lighthouse's "Take It Slow" made air quality a case in point: "Trying to find fresh air to breathe/ Just can't be done."
The pulsing intro and menacing strings make for a musical approximation of urban smog. This is one of producer Thom Bell's many masterworks. ("Buses on strike want a raise in fare/ So they can help pollute the air.")
Although the folksinger Rush is known for more than his pop chart appearances, this is one of his very few. ("Though I treat her carelessly, Mother Earth provides for me.")
This is not one of the handful of charting cover versions of Neil Young's murder tune. It's Hammond's hand-clapping report on how he swam in a contaminated country river and had to go to the doctor.
The Osmond brothers' hardest rocking track depicts air quality in Book of Revelation horses-of-the-apocalypse terms. ("There's a message floating in the air...There they go, what a show, smoking up the sky... If they keep on moving then it's all our fault.")
John Denver turned early seventies nature-consciousness into a career, but his "Rocky Mountain High" is his only chart hit from the era to express outright concern: "Now his life is full of wonder, but his heart still knows some fear/ Of some simple thing he cannot comprehend/ Why they try to tear the mountains down to bring in a couple more/ More people, more scars upon the land."
Wonder's urban epic from his Innervisons LP features more gasping and hacking: "He's almost dead from breathing on air pollution." The single clocks in at 3:12 while the album version contains a lengthy middle section that stretched it out to 7:26.
Although it went Top Ten as a reissue in '76, "She's Gone," in which the duo sings of taking heartbroken refuge in the city to let the "carbon and monoxide choke" their "thoughts away," first charted in '74,
Neil Young's own 1970 recording of "After the Gold Rush," with the line "look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s," is the classic version, but this lovely acapella curio from Britain is the one that charted.
(Also see Nos. 2 and 4.) Mitchell's 1974 live band version with the L.A. Express is less familiar today than her original 1970 recording, but it managed to chart higher than all other versions.
