CELIA:
In March 2024, lyricist Michael Colby invited me to join the cast of HOLIDAY REGARDS, a new revue that would be part of the Winter Rhythms series at New York’s Urban Stages. Comprised of songs (new and old) for which he wrote the lyrics, it would encompass the major holidays as well as other special days throughout the year. Michael gave me a choice of several songs for some of those holidays, but he specifically asked me to sing a song he was writing with songwriter Michele Brourman that addressed climate change. I have long admired Michele’s music, and without hearing what they were writing, I agreed.

“I Can’t Understand” arrived in my inbox in June, and I was greatly moved by what I heard. In fact, it didn’t take me long to declare first dibs on recording it!

But first there was a song to learn. As I did, I circled back to Michael about how one specific lyric was landing on my ear. He was generous in offering alternatives – so generous that he gave me five possibilities to choose from! I then worked with Music Director Michael Lavine and director Sara Louise Lazarus to do full justice to the song musically and as part of the show. Sara staged it very differently than the rest of the revue – she placed me on a stool downstage to have an urgent and personal conversation with the audience.

I knew that Michele had originally intended the song to have a chorus as backup, but for this staged debut it had become something more intimate. That sensibility carried into the version I recorded in early 2025 for a release on Earth Day. Michele recorded the piano, cello and bass tracks in California working with her engineer in Nashville. I recorded the vocals in New York City, with Michael at the session. Michele and I then listened to a first version, and she gave me invaluable suggestions for how to approach certain moments in the arc of the song.

Throughout this entire process, the world kept experiencing extreme weather. In fact, some people assumed that Michael wrote his lyrics in response to the 2024 wildfires in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, he did not. You can say he was prescient, or you can say that he was simply looking at what was already happening and taking it out to its logical (or illogical) conclusion.

We all hope this powerful song cuts through the noise and denials and politics to encourage us to “band as one world together, to ward off such weather.”

Thank you, Michael and Michele, for entrusting me with your song. It has been an honor.

MICHAEL:
In 2023, Canada endured one of the most devastating wildfires, with smoke and pollution extending far beyond. It was surrealistic to observe brown skies over my roof in Metuchen, New Jersey and there was similar unnatural darkness for days when I visited New York City. There was never a time when it more literally hit home to me about climate change and our endangered environment. That memory loomed large when I decided to write a song about climate change in observance of Earth Day for the off-Broadway benefit HOLIDAY REGARDS (a revue revolving around world holidays).

I’ve always wanted to collaborate with composter Michele Brourman and learned she shared my deep concern on the race against time to protect nature, so poignantly evoked in her setting of my lyric. Ironically, since the song was written, there has been one crisis after another — from floods in Florida and Texas to the conflagrations in Los Angeles (not to mention world disasters). These tragedies prompted Michele and me to say how timely our song’s warning feels. Sadly, with recurring setbacks in environmental protection, this global emergency can seem more precarious day by day.

MICHELE:
Michael Colby’s lyric for “I Can’t Understand” strikes a deeply resonant chord for me. I live in Los Angeles, where earthquakes and drought are normal, and where air pollution is a fact of life. But to see flames shooting up above the Santa Monica Mountains, to be showered with toxic ashes, to be praying for weeks that the fires would finally be contained – that is terrifying. What terrifies me even more is the number of people who choose not to care about the harm that we are causing to our natural world.

My answer to the musical question “what can I do in the face of all of this?” is to help create something that carries what I feel and believe. I am grateful that Michael gave me the opportunity to provide music for his words; they perfectly express the bewilderment and consternation that I feel – and the hope that we will find a way to “reverse things”. I’m deeply grateful to Celia Berk for singing our song so beautifully and whole-heartedly, and for choosing to record it in honor of Earth Day. And grateful to all the gifted people who worked on the recording.

May it help to change some hearts and minds!