Freegal Songs for Earth Day

Earth Day: flowering crabapple  image credit: Ellen Mackey 2012

I’ve been searching the web for the best Earth Day songs and then searching Freegal to see what was available there.

Some of these songs celebrate nature; others lament what we’ve done to it.

Kansas                         Death of Mother Nature Suite

 John Prine                   Paradise

 Yardbirds                     Shapes of Things

 Johnny Cash                Don’t Go Near the Water

James Taylor               Traffic Jam

Woody Guthrie            This Land Is Your Land

Bruce Springsteen       This Land Is Your Land            

 Michael Jackson          Earth Song

Nitty Gritty Dirt           Fishin’ in the Dark

   Band

 John Mayer                 Waiting on the World to Change

 Dave Matthews           One Sweet World

   Band

 Kenny Loggins             Conviction of the Heart

                                    This Island Earth (album)

 John Denver                Calypso

                                    The Wind

                                    Annie’s Song

                                    Sunshine on My Shoulder

                                    Rocky Mountain High

 Walk Off the Earth      Little Boxes

 Pete Seeger                 God Bless the Grass

Top of Freegal: The Other Songs That Walk Off the Earth Plays

                                Get Walk Off the Earth's "Gang of Rhythm" free from Freegal

Five people. One guitar. Internet sensation. Second only to Psy in views for 2012.

The Ontario band is lighting up the top 100 on Freegal. If you haven’t yet downloaded “Somebody That I Used to Know,” it’s well worth having.

These days, there are so many bands that have one catchy tune, but the rest are pretty blah.

Walk Off the Earth is an exception. The songs from REVO are available on Freegal: “Gang of Rhythm,” “Red Hands,” “Little Boxes,” “From Me To You,” “Speeches,” Summer Vibe,” “Polly,” and of course “Somebody That I Used to Know.”

And, I can't resist. Here's a spoof of “Somebody That I Used to Know.”

A Song for the Presidential Debate: “Little Boxes” by Walk Off the Earth

Photo: BrendelSignature

Malvina Renolds’ 1962 classic song “Little Boxes” is available for download on Freegal. WOTE does a nice rendition of it.

The song is a satire of the conformity of the suburbs with all the people going to their houses made of “ticky tacky” who all turn out the same. The only difference is the color: there’s a red one, and a blue one, and a yellow one, etc.

Of course, the song needs some updates. Now, they’re big boxes. And you can’t even tell them apart by the color. Last time we sang it, we said “There’s a tan one, and an eggshell one, and a gray one, and another tan one.”

So what does that have to do with the debates? The people in the boxes are the ones the candidates have to talk to. We know the cities are going blue. The countryside is going red. But the people in the tan boxes? What will they do?

Somebody That I Used to Know by Walk Off the Earth

I came across this song on Freegal's top 100 hits. It's categorized as "alternative" music.

I'm still trying to figure out how so much music can be "alternative," but the nearest I can tell is that it's defined by what it's not. Not country--not rap--not bland and over-produced pop.

This song is moody and catches deep in your brain to the point where you find yourself internally humming the chorus several times a day.


photo: Scott Meltzer

Then I came across this video cover of the song with words like "Gotye" and "WOTE," both of which sound like uber-cool slang that I'm not a part of.

I did a little digging and found out that Gotye is the Australian singer who wrote and performed the first song.

WOTE is an acronym for Walk Off the Earth, a Canadian indie band that made it big, largely owing to the success of this video which went viral and garnered 125 million hits in four months.

Five people on one guitar. This is really cool.

The WOTE version is the one available through Freegal. I see that they have a few other songs available including "Little Boxes," the 1962 satire that captures suburban life.

To learn how you can download Walk Off the Earth's songs free and legally, check out this information about Freegal