Trouble
A time traveler, a climate scientist, and a musician walk into a bar…
Perhaps you are familiar with the experience of trying to express to someone the need for change. Maybe, change isn’t the message, but trouble is. Something is going wrong and something’s gotta give to avoid the worst.
That’s the generic trope of the song. In the music video, the story is conveyed as a quarrel between lovers, with bad habits in the mix.
Specifically, Danton imagined the concept for this song as a message from someone coming from the future to share the bad news about our future with an unstable climate.
Lyrics & References
Time Travel
Verse 1:
Couldn’t find a time to tell you
Travelled back to 1965
When the air was thin
Cold pillars from the deep haunt me
And scream, it’s all your fault
No clues could move you
Damned if I try anyway
The opening riff in this big band, jazzy tune is intended to give the feel of swift movement off the top. The story teller is traveling to a time when the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was measuring at 320 ppm… 30 away from the “stable climate” target of 350.
Cold pillars — ice cores — provide undeniable proof that we’ve upset the balance.
The messenger is fraught with anguish over the futility. They become the target of slander and other indignities: a worrisome state expressed in minor chords.
Regrets
Chorus:
I’m sorry I came back
I’m sorry I told you
All the things I know
But you’ve got trouble
Rising in your wake
The artists settled on a very natural, Canadian phrase for the chorus that one might expect to be delivered when offering bad news: I’m sorry.
The inclusion of this cultural habit has also played well with hosts of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) shows that have interviewed the duo. These songs are a perfect accompaniment to the troubling news topic.
The concept of delivering bad news was important to explore. Heather and Danton had observed the scientific community lacking in empathy with the delivery of bad news in the form of charts and graphs.
Facts are facts, except that people also seek meaning from facts.
Youth today have received these facts as victims of the trouble. They are directly threatened. They deserve an apology.
Aligned to this, the tone and movement in the chorus is pointed and emphasizes the need for action.
Super computers
Verse 2:
Couldn’t find a time to tell you
Travelled back to 1985
Thought you’d know by now
Oh but you didn’t
The Titans had too much to lose
So they seeded doubt, red taped my mouth
Like they did before
Now I’m keeping score
The messenger tries again. This time, to the year when the first super computer might have been able to validate the data shared in the message.
It would be another 10 years until the first Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bonn, Germany.
In the mean time, industry — the Titans — had full knowledge of the message… and had multiple strategies in place to sustain the profitable harm.
Fake News
Bridge:
But your carnival is crushed
By the waves of your denial
And I’m crying in the clouds that grow heavy
While you smile
Knowledge at your fingertips
Fake news and Twitter quips
Of all the prophecies your time believes, it’s painful
That you don’t trust me
Heather recalls images from the aftermath of Hurricane (“superstorm”) Sandy. The broken structure of a roller coaster on the shore of New Jersey — one part of the “incalculable losses” — was an image that was easier to look at.
Calling back to the trouble rising in our wake, waves of denial perpetuate reckless fossil fuel habits.
When Danton and Heather were in studio, this bridge was troublesome. They wanted a departure from easy listening. They needed dissonance.
At one point, Joby Baker (their brilliant producer), was crafting beautiful chord voicings on the piano and Heather stopped him: “no, this is too nice… I know we’re talking about a smile here, but, think of Donald Trump’s smile.”
He immediately pivoted to evoke the jarring sense of someone smiling in the midst of disaster.
The song goes onto plea with the listener, who is hard to reach given the age of misinformation: please trust our message.
