Nashville got absolutely hammered by Winter Storm Fern last weekend, and John Rich has decided to write a song about it.
Hope everyone out there that’s been affected by the winter storm is as safe and warm as possible. Thousands of people in the Nashville area remain without power, and it’s all because of the freezing rain that hit Davidson County. The Metro Nashville area ended up being right on the line of snow and rain, which ended up being a worst case scenario for the city and the surrounding Middle Tennessee area.
As you can see in the weather report below, the bullseye of the storm affected the city of Nashville with almost an inch of freezing rain:
That’s caused prolonged power outages in Music City.
At the height of the event, over 200,000 people were without power. Now, basically a week removed from the ice storm hitting Nashville, over 80,000 people still don’t have power. Temperatures have stayed at or below freezing ever since the winter weather hit, and that paired with extensive tree damage has made it incredibly difficult to restore power to all residents impacted by the storm.
John Rich is one of those Nashville residents.
Earlier this week, the one half of Big and Rich shared a video of what his neighborhood looked like in the aftermath of the winter storm. The freezing rain that came with the weather event coated everything with a thick layer of ice, and much of that ice remains days after the weather hit Nashville.
Much of the area still looks like this as melting has been minimal in Music City:
Unfathomable, really.
Earlier today, Rich took to his X account to say that he’s going on day 6 without power following the ice storm that hammered Nashville. That’s obviously horrible, and many have started to question the preparedness of the city and its response to the ice storm.
John Rich has evidently used some of his “powerless time” to craft a song that tackles the frustrations that have come from the ice storm. He titled it “Global Warming (Is Freezin’ Us To Death),” and it offers up some hilarious verses and a rather catchy winter-weather-themed chorus. Oh, and it takes aim at Al Gore, who famously warned about global warming in the late 1990s and early 2000s:
“Al and all his experts had to save us from ourselves
They made us drive electric cars and put windmills everywhere
Well I guess they did too good a job because just look around my town
The ice is piling up and now the trees are falling down.
Hey Al Gore, are you still sure the planet’s burning up?
Cause everywhere I go, it’s awfully cold, and the pipes are freezing shut
And when I lay down in my house I can almost see my breath
Global warming is freezing us to death.”
John Rich stood somewhere outside his Nashville-area home to perform the new song, and you can see just how icy the city still is. The trees behind him are still caked with ice, and as he pointed out in the tune, many are buckling under the added weight of the frozen precipitation.
Pretty ironic that he offered up some burns directed at Al Gore in the icy conditions:
“Here’s a little song I just wrote. Dedicated to Al Gore. (It’s called) ‘GLOBAL WARMING (Is Freezin’ Us To Death).’ I’m startin’ to think that Al Gore fella is full of s**t?”
A great song, and one made that much better by performing it out in the elements.
John Rich has every right to be fed up, especially as he goes on almost a week without power. It is hard to believe in the whole “Global Warming” thing during a time of brutal cold… but to play devil’s advocate a bit, some research suggests that extreme winter weather could actually be caused by global warming (yeah, I know, it sounds crazy) because it’s disrupting the arctic polar vertex and causing it to stretch into areas not normally impacted by prolonged cold weather. It’s clear that human activity can influence the climate, but to what extent is more debated. We should certainly be good stewards of the planet, but is climate change the single greatest threat to humanity on planet Earth? No…. no matter what Al Gore wants you to believe about fossil fuels… as he flies around in his private jet.
But all that doesn’t make for as good of a song… I think John Rich took the right path with this one.
