The World of Concrete
Houston, TX
2025, Junior, Performing Arts
Verse 1
There was a place
That I once heard of
It was green
And you could hear the birds chirping
Verse 2
But now all I see
Is a sad, sad gray
All I hear is
The cars honking
It’s not, like what it was before
Pre-Chorus
The ratios are off
Between Green
And Gray
This is not right at all
What can we do if they don’t care
What can we do if they don’t listen
Maybe
We can say
Chorus
This is the World of Concrete
Where everything is just not right
This is the World of Concrete
Where there’s barely any green in sight
What can we do
What can we say
To make all of this right
Verse 3
I mean like, the world is
Like a pie chart for heaven’s sake
It’s about ¾ s ocean and the rest is land
But if you look closer at that ¼
You can see that half of THAT is gray
And the other half is green
(Interlude)
Bridge
What was once a piece of green, green land,
Is now a piece of metal mountains
This isn’t right
I know that
But what can I do
What can I say
There must be something we can do
To make this gray world better
Maybe we can grow more plants
Destroy less forests
Make more green infrastructures
And let’s just tell everyone
That
Chorus
This is the World of Concrete
Where everything is just not right
This is the World of Concrete
Where there’s barely any green in sight
Outro
We’ll make this better
We’ll add more life
We’ll turn this world
Into a better place
Tonight
Reflection
The reason I wrote the song, “The World of Concrete,” is because I live in Houston, Texas, and, although I see many trees and bushes in the front or back yards of people’s houses, I do not see wide fields or forests within in the city. But if I drive into the countryside (or outside the city of Houston), I see wide stretches of open land and wooded forests. I would like to see more of that where I live. What inspired my creative process is looking at pictures of forests and contrasting those images with my own city. There is quite a big difference between the two. I have learned through my exploration of the contest theme, Connections to Nature: Looking Inside, Going Outside, that although we want to be comfortable and live our own individual best lives, we cannot do that at the expense of our nature and wildlife. We need to be better at coexisting with animals and growing more plants. In class we talk about invasive species, but, honestly, WE are the invasive species! My message to listeners is that you should grow more plants and turn, at least part of our world, from gray back to green. This is the only world we live in, and we should help it!