If someone asked you to think of a music genre to represent environmentalism, would you ever think of thrash metal? You would if you were outraged about the environment’s current state. Australian rock band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, whose name sounds like the title to a bad children’s book, are certainly outraged environmentalists. In response to the stream of bad environmental news we receive daily, they wrote an album called Infest the Rats’ Nest, which thematically investigates a dystopian future for humanity with a few sci-fi twists. Lyrically, this song is not infused with thought-provoking metaphors, although I put the lyrics below for some context. Conceptually, this song (and the whole album) presents a fascinating prediction for the future of Earth.
(Warning: This song is LOUD)
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[Intro]
Red Mars for the rich
[Verse 1]
I’m just a poor boy
Living frugally
I see Mars on TV
I see people happy
I work fields with
Blistered fingers
I look starward
That world has no place for me
[Chorus]
Red Mars
The tsars
Live large
Red Mars for the rich, rich
[Verse 2]
Mars for the privileged
Earth for the poor
Mars terraforming slowly
Earth has been deformed
Just forget it, ya ain’t coming here
The ticket’s too dear
I stare sadly into my beer
That world has no place for me
[Chorus]
Red Mars
The tsars
Live large
Red Mars for the rich, rich, rich
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What is this song about? It is about people traveling to Mars from the perspective of an average working-class individual. In the setting of this album, the Earth has been “deformed” by pollution and disease, and people are leaving Earth. More specifically, the world’s richest people are leaving Earth. It may seem obvious that the rich would be the ones to leave Earth in a disaster, but King Gizzard uses this song to point out how this creates a lack of accountability.
To simplify a complex issue, the richest people in the world create a lot of pollution. Some may credit this pollution to over consumption, but also, the wealthy people who run the world’s largest companies tend to lead companies that generate tons of material waste. Consumers are left with no other choice but to purchase products that will end up in landfills like plastic because companies are addicted to how cheap those products are.
“Mars for the Rich” points out how poor people are already the main victims to climate change and how they could continue to be victims in this doomsday scenario where people can leave the Earth for Mars. Looking back on some of the oldest human civilizations like Rome and Egypt, there has always been tension between the rich and poor. Musically, “Mars for the Rich” plays into that tension because it is a thrash metal song which creates anger and energizes the listener. It is also ironic that a song about pollution uses a genre that depends on so much electricity. However, the lyrics that describe the singer as “just a poor boy, living frugally” expresses the idea that consumers like this band do not have the time or resources to fight climate change like the largest companies in the world and are victims to something they have no control over.
While this song might be built from a fictional story, I do not think we are far off from seeing something similar in real life. Space travel is already becoming a way for billionaires like Jeff Bezos to spend 5.5 billion dollars for a 4-minute spaceflight. At first glance, I felt like that money could be used in infinitely more useful ways here on Earth, but some people argue that competition for space travel will make the world a better place because it fosters a plethora of scientific research, some of which is applicable to making aspects of communicating and transporting goods easier on Earth. The issue certainly is not as simple as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard outlines in their song. While the timeline is hard to predict, humans will make their way to Mars eventually. The question becomes: do you think space travel will end up saving Earth’s elites from the destruction they caused or do you think that people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos ultimately have good intentions when it comes to creating more access to space travel?
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