Spaceship Earth and its Soundscapes. Latency Problems of International Ecological Conflicts in Pop Music

While the political dimension of pop songs is often discussed through the songwriters’ intentions, this article explores music as a resonance body of latency: Can pop songs describe hidden societal structures and political dynamics that remain invisible in politics, particularly in environmental conflicts? Focusing the ecological metaphor “Spaceship Earth”, its narration in pop culture and its continuation through the Gaia hypothesis, this article uses prominent pop music examples to show that virulent, but mostly unspoken and unresolved aspects of environmental conflicts – unequal vulnerabilities, hierarchies and inequitable responsibility attribution – are continuously processed, distorted and condensed in pop music.

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