Funk The Planet
My All-Star Sustainability Single for World Environment Day
Today, on World Environment Day, I release the Doctor Noize sustainability single and video Funk The Planet from my upcoming Positive Energy! (The Music of Doctor Noize)! It’s one final ride into the sunset of a band I was lucky to be invited to join and release an album with in 2021 featuring Konshens The MC from DC (son of hip-hop pioneer Master Gee of The Sugarhill Gang), 3x Grammy-winner and UN Goodwill Ambassador Ricky Kej from India, and 3x Grammy-winning producer extraordinaire Lonnie Park from New York. We opened a UN General Assembly Meeting with a song and were featured in the UNICEF World Children’s Day Concert that year.
The Early Buzz*
I was gonna describe it more until a review was published a day ahead of its release:
“Doctor Noize’s “Funk The Planet” arrives with the kind of bold ambition that wants to move bodies, spark imaginations, and slip in a call to care for the world while it’s at it. The song portrays its environmental theme in broad, welcoming strokes… it feels communal in the best sense, like a group of artists rallying around a shared idea and finding a groove muscular enough to hold it. Plenty of songs with messages don’t make an impact. Dr. Noize… has spent years making music that treats young listeners as curious, capable audiences rather than passive recipients. The best part of “Funk The Planet” is its optimism. The song centers on the idea that joyful music can still carry conviction, and Dr. Noize makes a persuasive case for it.”
— Randall Radic, The Riff (Medium’s Premier Music Publication)**
He’s right. That is my central message to artists today. Our culture needs our music to have conviction and purpose. More than ever. Here’s what the song’s acclaimed mixer (and writer/performer of its most catchy lyric and vocal “Oooh… that’s funky…”) says:
“This project is a unicorn where excellence, purpose, and sheer fun intersect. Leave it to Cory to unabashedly attack the heaviest challenges of the world with his musical message brilliantly wrapped in earworms and funny lyrics. I loved every minute working with my crazy friend.”
— 3x Grammy-award winning producer Lonnie Park
Look, I’m not trying to impugn Lonnie’s professional honesty and integrity, but the only accurate word in there is “crazy.” I’d also like to note that Lonnie’s one of the guest lecturers at my Stanford Workshop this summer, although he doesn’t actually know that until he reads this Noizeletter.***
Two Fun Updates
First… I’ve been commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the wonderful Strings Music Festival for an Artist In Residency with the Lullaby Project. From Carnegie: “Each year, the Lullaby Project pairs new and expecting parents with professional artists to write and sing personal lullabies…” Previous Lullaby Project artists have included Natalie Merchant, Dianne Reeves and Catherine Zeta-Jones, so obviously this is a huge step down for them. But hey, I’m up for it.****
Second… This year’s Stanford Recording Arts Workshop, the two-week intensive program at Stanford University I designed, run and teach, sold out faster than ever! The teaching staff met and figured out a way to open up two more slots. One went immediately, so there is literally one final spot left as I write this, and you can register here. I realize I sound like a used car salesman, but it’s true. If you’re interested, grab it now and we’ll see you this summer! In other news, I have a beautiful orange non-exploding 1980 Ford Pinto that needs a home…*****
Final Thoughts…
I hope you’ll take a moment on World Environment Day to think of how you can help shape it. As I’ve previously said, I think we couldn’t hand the planet over to the young soon enough. It’s time for new thinking and methodology. And Funk The Planet’s conceptually related to my last single Diversity. Funk’s video, which The Riff loved, was again conceived and directed by my daughter Sidney. Watching her creation for the first time, with its colorful array of animals and species of plants, I was instantly reminded of what every student of science, nature and the environment knows:
We literally need biodiversity to survive, thrive, and evolve. But we’ve forgotten that as a culture, reframing the concept of diversity as bad instead of something that’s literally necessary for us to exist, thrive, and yes, even compete.
Let’s change that back. With youthful positive energy. We’ll collaborate to compete with the challenges the future brings us. We’ll funk the planet together. Not that other thing the song nudge-nudge-winks-winks we could do if you don’t focus on the words and their meaning too closely and you think we’re sayin’ somethin’ else.
Thanks for your time. Share positive energy. Go make the world you live in.
— Cory Cullinan / Doctor Noize
*Not a drinking game story. Sorry.
**Read the reviewer’s hilarious Bio at the bottom of the linked review. Dude’s got game.
***Congratulations Professor Park!!! You’re gonna love the fame and salary of academia!
****I’m just a giver like that.
*****I don’t really have a non-exploding 1980 orange Pinto. It’s 70s green and it’s fire.