What have we done to the world?
Look what we've done.

"Earth Song" is the third single from Michael Jackson's album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I, which also featured our #43 song pick "They Don't Care About Us" on SoulBounce's Top 50 Michael Jackson Songs countdown. It is no accident that both songs are politically and socially-based; looking back, the space that Michael was in then could definitely be described as "eye-opening." 

The GRAMMY-nominated "Earth Song" continued the message that MJ brought us in many of his songs, but namely in one of the most popular songs that he co-wrote years earlier, "We Are the World." Haunting and spiritual, "Earth Song" is Michael Jackson's prophetic preface to the BP Oil disaster, the current wars in the Middle East and Africa, deforestation and the worldwide assault on our environment.

As his vocals spiral and fall amid a garden of music provided by a symphony orchestra, he questions the necessity of war and the nature of destruction. Then he took us to church. The gospel element inherent in this song adds an emotional tone that makes this perhaps one of the most compelling songs ever written about the environment. For, as Michael asks at the song's end--as we continue to destroy our Earth, ignoring her cries and continuing to kill each other through war--"What about us?"

Michael Jackson: "Earth Song"