Truth to Power

Album: An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • Written and produced by OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder and T Bone Burnett, this call to action on climate change was written for the film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power.

    "Ten years later we are still talking about climate change," Ryan Tedder said. "Former Vice President Al Gore has again made a film that inspires one to get involved and do something for our planet. It was an honor to create a song with the legendary T Bone Burnett that speaks to the theme of this movie that the 'truth' leads to 'power' when it comes to standing up and helping to create change."
  • The song was written from the perspective of mother Earth, talking to her inhabitants.

    "I wanted to take a break from writing songs about myself," said Tedder. "So I took the point-of-view of mother earth turning the tables on those who’d betray her."
  • Tedder believes that it is important that contemporary musicians shed light on social problems such as climate change. He told Schön! Magazine:

    "I'm doing my best to address issues that people are thinking about; issues that are real. People's obsession with staring at their phones and living their lives through other people's Instagram pages and feeling depressed about how s--tty their life is because they don't have the same figure or the same money - that's an issue and it's one that more people should be writing about.

    Artists should be writing about Donald Trump. Artists should be writing about the fact that we've got missiles aimed at each other over the Korean peninsula. I'm not saying that everything has to be political. [Recently] I was going back and listening to a lot of stuff from the '60s and the '70s: The Beatles, The Stones, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell... They were all writing about things that were actually taking place in the universe, the real world, and that's what some of their biggest hits are about. Buffalo Springfield's 'For What It's Worth', for example. The thing that makes me sad right now is that I don't feel like anybody's saying anything about what it's actually happening in the world, with the exception of maybe Arcade Fire's new [Everything Now] album."

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