Happy Earth Day!
To celebrate this year, I attended the Global Citizen 2015 Earth Day, a rally and concert on the Washington Monument grounds.
Leading up to the event there was much skepticism about its impact — although the event was meant to highlight important issues including climate change and the end to poverty, there was a fear that the big draw for people was the concert and the calls to action would be nothing more than an afterthought.
Although I do think the concert was a big draw for people, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because it provided an audience to hear great music, but also an important message by using interactive videos and big name speeches. The format definitely could have been more effective — they should have featured the speeches and videos in even shorter segments, they often called for taking action on mobile devices which were inoperable due to the huge crowds, and the event should’ve been more eco-friendly; however, even with the drawbacks, this type of event has great potential to strike that perfect balance of “work” and play to really motivate action amongst young adults.
To read more about the issues, watch video from the event and see interactive content go to globalcitizen.org
Now to get to the music — I wasn’t able to see all of the acts live, but I’m glad I made it just in time for Usher and No Doubt — it was such a beautiful day!
Find a few performances below:
Usher brought out special guest Common to perform “Glory” at the 6:40 mark. What do you think of Usher’s rendition?
No Doubt looked and sounded great. Gwen looks like she came in a time machine from 1999, absolutely flawless!