“Green, Green Grass” by George Ezra, Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Last year, George Ezra returned with his third album, Gold Rush Kid. Like Ezra's previous two records, Gold Rush Kid topped the U.K. album charts. The singer-songwriter had interesting stories behind the recording of his previous records from a trip across Europe for his debut Wanted on Voyage and staying with a complete stranger in Barcelona in Staying at Tamara's. Returning to work with long-term collaborator Joel Pott, his long-term collaborator, Gold Rush Kid doesn’t have quite the backstory as the previous two records. But the otherwise sunny third installment from Ezra was born out of the singer’s struggles with OCD and nihilism.

THERE’S NO ONE IN HERE LIVIN’ GONNA MAKE IT OUT ALIVE. For the second single from Gold Rush Kid, “Green Green Grass,” George Ezra was inspired by something he witnessed on a Christmas holiday in 2018 to the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Ezra explained on Instagram that he and friends were sitting on the beach when loud music started playing in the distance. He says, “[T]he curiosity got the best of me, and I had to excuse myself. I ran down these streets in the beautiful sunshine and I got to this kind of high street and there w[ere] different sound systems out and there w[ere] people cooking out and dancing and holding each other and laughing and honestly it was just beautiful, it was an amazing thing to observe.” He asked people in the shops what was happening, and they replied, “[T]oday is a funeral day, and there are three lives in our community that we have lost and that we are celebrating today.” Most European and many North American cultures regard funerals as sad events, but this celebration of what life was for the person struck Ezra. 

LOADED UP WHEN THE SUN COMES DOWN. The production on “Green Green Grass” features synthesizers and autotune and brass and saxophone in addition to the normal guitars, bass, drums, and occasional keys listeners are used to a George Ezra song. The song is a pop celebration in a way that most of Ezra’s music is not. In his Instagram post about the song, George goes on to talk about enjoying the music and atmosphere of the joyful funeral in St. Lucia even more than before he knew what it was all about. Then he says “I went back to the bar and carried on with the rum punch and the beer and spent the evening with these two people that I love; my two friends.” As Ezra neared 30 when he released Gold Rush Kid, death and the thought of becoming a father one day were on his mind. In the Guardian he talks about his music being successful, though never really making it in America, which he then says that he came to realize he didn’t want because “it’s too big a place to consider mirroring what my work looks like in Europe and Australia” and that “[t]o try to recreate that would kill me.” Fame and success in the music industry certainly looks different for every artist, and George Ezra’s contentment with sticking to Europe and Australia rather than chasing the impossible dream of conquering the American pop charts may leave the singer with fulfillment rather than ambition.

Read the lyrics on Genius.