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End of the World

by Martin Hoybye

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New single calls out “Big Oil”

The new song “The End of the World” is dedicated to Greta Thunberg, Autumn Peltier and other youths and children that fight a grown-up’s climate battle

In this low-key ballad the Danish singer/songwriter Martin Høybye sings intimately about the repercussions of the unbridled greed of the oil industry. Almost defiantly the singer starts the song a cappella before accompanying himself on guitar with only the sound of gentle waves added towards the end.

The song takes on the structural violence committed against people and planet by Big Oil over the past many decades. And it dwells on the fact that those most responsible for perpetuating and proliferating the lies about the harmful consequences of fossil fuels have profited exorbitantly from these lies, while others are left to foot the bill in terms of their own and the planet’s heath.

“Having noticed the flak that (then) teen climate activist Greta Thunberg and others got on social media in 2019, I felt compelled to finish this song, which had been lying around as a draft. And I shared a first version on social media,” Martin Høybye explains.

After posting the draft he received some flak of his own; online comments that went from offensive to aggressively dismissive. It was but a tiny taste of what was wielded at Thunberg and her peers every day. However, instead of feeling disheartened by these encounters, Høybye felt emboldened to eventually make a proper recording and release the song.

“You know, Al Gore called his book about the climate crisis “An inconvenient truth.” Perhaps the anger directed at messengers such as Thunberg stems from the inconvenient truth that it is necessary to change ourselves to avert climate disaster. And then to be told by a girl. To be told by a child. It just gets some people going,” he says.

lyrics

End of the World
Words and music by Martin Hoybye

On the Marshall Islands the water rises
and threatens to drown the land
There’s only so much that you can do
with the ocean against the hand
Scientists agree it takes radical measures
to set the planet straight
While Mr. Oil and Mr. Fossil Fuels
deny there’s trouble at our gate

Well, never believe when the suits are talking
and telling you there’s no way
There are other means to fuel our rides
than the ones we use today
But when the industry needs to make a cut
out of poisoning the land and the sky
They’ll lie to you straight like there’s no tomorrow
and leave you in the wasteland… to die

While they pay the rent
with the end of the world
And they pay their bills
with the lives of little boys and girls
The truth is that there’s no one
no one has the right
to pay nothing at all
with someone else’s life

So where do we look for alternatives
when it happens that new designs
are sidelined and put to no use
while we build a dozen new pipelines
while the polar bears croak, and the permafrost melts
and people wonder why they get ill
your living’s a task, you go to your doctor and ask
can you slip me some more of those pills

While they pay the rent
with the end of the world
And they pay their bills
with the lives of little boys and girls
The truth is that there’s no one
no one has the right
to pay anything
with someone else’s life

The truth is that there’s no one
no one has the right
to pay anything
with someone else’s life

credits

released October 24, 2023
End of the World
(Martin Høybye)

Musicians:
Martin Høybye: Ac gtr, vocal.

Producer/recording engineer:
Martin Høybye & Dennis Ahlgren

Mix:
Dennis Ahlgren

Mastering:
Sigurdór Guðmundsson

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Martin Hoybye Denmark

Martin Høybye has spent more than two decades honing his craft as a songwriter and co-writer professionally, before taking his songwriting practice to academia. From 2019 to 2022 he shared songwriting with others from South Africa to Sweden to identify ways of working that could turn songwriting into more of a communal resource. ... more

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