Counting Crows - Big Yellow Taxi ft. Vanessa Carlton

Today we listened to "Big Yellow Taxi," covered by Counting Crows. The original song was written and sung by Joni Mitchell. We discussed the repetition in the song and how it helped us to understand the theme. The part that repeats is: "That you don't know what you got till it's gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." This helps to reinforce the message of the song: if we don't take care of Earth and protect it, the beauty of it will disappear.

Perhaps the best stanza to really understand Joni's message is in the second stanza. She says that they took away all the trees from nature and put them into a "tree museum" and charged people to look at them. Imagine that! Destroying the trees, but then charging people to see them. What's sad about this, we discussed, is that this isn't really that off. This does happen more and more as we develop and as humans take over more land and clear cut beautiful forests.

DD