Music for change

We spoke to two artists using their music to inspire positive action for the planet

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Published: June 10, 2025
This Article was written by: Katie Hill - My Green Pod
activism, arts, music, SDGs

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This article first appeared in our World Environment Day 2025 issue of My Green Pod Magazine. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox

Main image: A solar-powered street performance was part of AY Young’s Battery Tour

Music has the power to connect and move us in ways no other medium can – so when used as a force for good, could it have the power to change the world?

OMMMbassadors Antonique Smith and AY Young certainly think so; they are using their music and influence to support the work of OMMM, an organisation dedicated to elevating global consciousness through spiritual engagement and environmental stewardship.

We spoke to both artists following their show-stopping performances at the Love Your Mother event in Times Square, in celebration of Earth Day 2025.

Antonique Smith

Grammy-nominated singer, film, TV and Broadway actress Antonique Smith is also CEO and co-founder of Climate Revival, and was the official ambassador for Earth Day 2025.

She fell in love with music after hearing Whitney Houston’s voice as a young girl, and began singing in her church choir at the age of seven.

‘I can’t remember a time in my life when music – or making people feel – wasn’t my passion’, she tells us.

That passion has stayed with Antonique to this day, and has shaped her as an artist. ‘I think my purpose in life is to make people feel’, she reflects, ‘and I believe that’s my music’s superpower. It opens hearts, which allows for healing, introspection and inspiration.’

Antonique is no stranger to the power of music; one of her first demos as a little girl was about a child seeking love from her parents.

‘Very early on, I understood music as a force for good’, she shares. ‘I hope to make a massive impact in people’s lives – and I hope to help the world win the climate fight.’

Antonique’s music became linked to the environmental movement and sustainability 11 years ago, after a recording session for the first album about climate change.

‘I was there to sing ‘Mercy Mercy Me’’, she remembers, ‘even though I hadn’t heard much about climate change beyond polar bears and glaciers.’

Discovering that her people were dying from pollution, and that that pollution was also causing climate change, was a life-changing moment for Antonique; ‘That night, I joined the environmental and climate justice movement and I’ve been using my music to inform and inspire action ever since’, she shares.

To Antonique, sustainability is about people and love – and climate change is personal. Members of her own family have cancer and asthma, so when she joined the dots between environmental and human health, climate advocacy became a calling.

‘The environment is the most urgent cause to support’, she says. ‘The world’s existence is in jeopardy! What good is any other fight if we don’t have a planet any more? After coming to one of my concerts I want people to feel moved, uplifted and inspired. I hope their hearts have been opened.’

‘Love Song To The Earth’ and ‘Mercy Mercy Me’ are just two of the songs Antonique sings to advocate for the environment; ‘I sing ‘Here Comes the Sun’ as an ode to one of our greatest solutions – solar power’, she tells us. ‘I am the ambassador of Sun Day, on 21 September, which will be a new international day for us to celebrate the sun and renewable energy. I’m very excited about it!’

So do all artists and influencers have a duty to use their platform to effect positive change? Antonique is clear: ‘Yes’, she replies. ‘Toni Cade Bambara said the role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible. I don’t think every song they sing needs to be a message song, but I do think they should take time to sing about and speak about the things we are facing.’

Antonique Smith, official ambassador for Earth Day 2025, singing at OMMM’s Love Your Mother event in Times Square

AY Young

AY Young is a recording artist, producer, UN Youth Leader for the SDGs and founder of the Battery Tour, a global music movement powered by clean energy.

‘I was in high school when I fell in love with music for the first time, maybe 16 or 17 years old, and since then it has been my passion’, AY tells us. ‘It was always this idea that I could change the world, and I think music just became the vehicle for that passion for me.’

Today AY is living that passion; he has performed 960 concerts powered entirely by clean energy as part of his Battery Tour. The goal is to hit 1,000 and achieve a Guinness World Record.

AY had already embarked on the Battery Tour when he made the conscious decision to use music as a force for good.

‘Back when I was about 200 or 300 concerts in, I was sleeping in my car and driving from city to city, state to state’, AY remembers. ‘I was in a city that didn’t have energy, yet I had energy in my car from the batteries I was using to power the concerts. I could do a concert in the city, but the grid was down and the actual city didn’t have power.’

AY started Googling and discovered that a billion people didn’t have access to energy.

‘I immediately was like OK, well I’m an outlet, right? And I believe an outlet is someone who uses their passion or their talent to take action every day to help people. I thought to myself, if I’m an outlet for change, I need to use music to help people and get the world plugged in.’

AY changed the Battery Tour to what he describes as a ‘music for impact’ company, and made sure that every concert from then would raise money to fund, promote, develop and deploy sustainable solutions to people who need them, and give energy, food, water and power to people around the world who didn’t have it.

‘It wasn’t because I chose to support anything specifically’, AY tells us; ‘it’s just the right thing to do and it is what I do.’

‘I think in life we should do what we love to do every day’, AY continues. ‘I wanted to do concerts because I love music, and so I found a way to power a concert anywhere. I didn’t choose to do anything other than what I love to do every day. I just am what I am: I like batteries, clean energy, dope technology – that’s in my DNA. I had to find a way to perform, because I wasn’t allowed to be on the the big stages or in the big venues because I didn’t have enough followers, or didn’t have a booking agent, or I wasn’t with a major record label. So I did it out of necessity.’

For AY, the term sustainability has been overcomplicated and is charged with doomsday predictions that everything’s over, we’re too late and there’s nothing we can do.

‘I’m taking a different approach’, he shares. ‘We can do something every day – it doesn’t even have to be about sustainability. It’s just what we should do as humans.’

AY uses the example of ocean plastic; throwing plastic in the ocean is ‘just something we shouldn’t do’, he says. ‘Is that being sustainable? I guess you can put that label on it – but overall, we probably just shouldn’t throw plastic in the ocean where fish are, where they can suffocate or drown or it can mess things up.’

In the same way, common sense dictates that we should be making use of solar energy; ‘We can use the sun to power things’, AY says. ‘It’s here. It’s available every day. The sun comes out; you can store energy and you can use it to power things. It’s not even about sustainability essentially – it’s just the fact that it’s an energy source that is open and available, so use it. It’s dope. It’s cool. It works. Like me, that’s what I do. I just do what’s dope. I do what’s cool. It doesn’t have to be all about all these labels.’

To AY, the Battery Tour is just the launchpad; he believes his next project – Project 17 – will be the biggest impact album and project of all time. ‘Project 17 has one song for each of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals’, AY tells us. ‘Each song has a purpose and a mission to power change across the globe –from climate action and education to ending poverty. We’re talking major artists, real solutions and global storytelling like never before. This isn’t just music. It’s a movement. We’re rewriting what it means to be an artist, an activist and a changemaker. And we’re just getting warmed up.’