It’s Just Music After All: The Overestimated Power of Pop In Politics
It’s Just Music After All: The Overestimated Power of Pop In Politics
Kamala Harris's campaign song comes from Beyoncé—and pop culture seems to be on her side in general. Great! But can you really win elections with good taste in music?
Good, now Barack Obama also supports Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy. This is certainly remarkable, huge news, but for many young US citizens, the decisive endorsement was announced long ago: Beyoncé is playing on Harris’s team. “In what kind of country do we want to live?” Harris asks in her newly released campaign video, and Beyoncé answers off-screen: “Freedom, Freedom, cut me loose.” The clip is underscored by her 2016 song “Freedom,” a soul piece with a gospel chorus: powerlessness and the desire for freedom, pain and fighting spirit are compressed in this glossy piece. Four years ago, it was often heard at Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and even today, it has the power to blow a few MAGA caps off Republican heads.
We could talk here about how much of a civil rights activist Kamala Harris really is (and how much the multimillionaire Beyoncé is). But let’s briefly note what’s happening right now in the United States of pop music: Stadium singers like Ariana Grande and Lizzo, rap stars like Cardi B and Lil Nas X, but also Hollywood greats like Barbra Streisand immediately sided with Harris after Biden’s resignation. Above all, Charli XCX (who is British, though), whose album Brat is currently celebrating great success, fueled countless memes and other internet antics with her support for Harris. It’s unimaginable how the house would burn if Taylor Swift were to get involved, too. That’s not unlikely: four years ago, she already baked cookies for Joe Biden.
Some media see the loyal following of these stars as a critical mass that could decisively influence the election campaign. Obviously, the sudden star appeal of a candidate who was considered unpopular and bland just the day before yesterday is largely due to Beyoncé and her allies. They give their fans the feeling of superiority of standing with Harris on the side of those who are everything Trump believes he is: dream makers, larger than life. And, of course, pop songs like “Freedom” are fantastic vehicles to express what is good and right about America, as Kamala Harris knows well.
Even George Washington and Abraham Lincoln once used songs in their campaigns when “popular music” meant something quite different from today. John F. Kennedy had Frank Sinatra sing for him (and possibly even help him into office, but that’s another story); Bill Clinton grabbed “Don’t Stop,” a classic by Fleetwood Mac, for his campaign. With Barack Obama, pop-cultural expertise finally moved into the White House permanently; his famous and annually published summer playlist can still boost musicians’ careers to this day. Even Hillary Clinton, who was never considered particularly cool, knew very well how important a little stardust is for image building. “I want to be as good a president as Beyoncé is a musician,” she diligently explained in 2016.
How ambiguous pop songs remain even when they are instrumentalized for unambiguous goals - the history of campaign songs also shows this: The traditional “This Land Is Your Land,” for example, was used by both George Bush Sr. and Bernie Sanders, who might be credited with similar taste in music but not similar political goals. Sometimes, the ambiguities go terribly wrong. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” a song about a Vietnam veteran abandoned by the world, was hijacked by Ronald Reagan in the eighties due to its deceptively powerful chorus for his campaign until Springsteen prohibited him from using it.
Trump later tried unsuccessfully with the song again, as well as with the equally colossal misinterpreted R.E.M. piece “Losing My Religion.” Hardly any pop or rock star let him use their songs, not Adele, not the Rolling Stones. Unforgettable remains Trump’s inauguration ceremony in 2017, for which he could only win a few country singers, mediocre radio bands, and the washed-up redneck Kid Rock. Four years later, stars like Lady Gaga and—Bruce Springsteen—played at Biden’s inauguration. The images of the show were a relief for many: Here, America became big and wide again instead of “great again.” Even recently, with Céline Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” for whatever reason.
Especially in the birthplace of pop culture, music has a different political significance than in Germany, for example, where one usually only learns how politicians tick musically at the time of the military tattoo. Good taste in music is considered a sign of being in touch with the times, a value marker, and an ideological calling card, even for presidential candidates. All the better for Harris that she was spotted a year ago with really great records in her luggage, for example, by jazz musicians Ella Fitzgerald and Charles Mingus. “Where people sing, there settle down/Evil people have no songs,” Johann Gottfried Seume wrote a long time ago, and one could add today: certainly no pop stars.
But that’s not entirely true. Mass music in the USA is not just Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, but also the powerful country music industry. While it’s not nearly as uniformly reactionary as many might believe and has long been producing all kinds of progressively minded stars, MAGA fans and hardcore gun enthusiasts are still not outsiders in Nashville, the genre’s center. Jason Aldean, for instance, one of the most successful country artists in the USA, is a declared supporter of Trump. His hit “Try That In a Small Town” from last year was considered by many as a call for lynching. Aldean sang to anyone who wants to mess with his lyrical self: “Try that in a small town, see how far you make it down the road. Around here, we take care of our own. You cross that line, it won’t take long...” The rest was left to the imagination. The setting for the video clip is the Maury County Courthouse in Tennessee, where a lynch mob murdered the Black teenager Henry Choate in November 1927.
Another country celebrity, Grammy winner Lee Greenwood, was one of the few truly prominent guests at Trump’s inauguration in 2017. His soapy song “God Bless the U.S.A.” already sounded out of time when it was released in the eighties when it was played at Reagan events. Today, it’s Trump’s entrance hymn, and for several months now, the two have been selling a joint Bible edition. Those who have such friends might not need shiny pop stars to score points with their clientele; Trump’s homemade reputation as a lone fighter against an alleged cultural elite will certainly not be harmed by the contempt of the progressive pop world.
It’s a sad truism, but this election won’t be decided on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, and certainly not on the last remaining music journalism portals, but in the swing states, where many people certainly care little about the political efforts of the liberal East and West Coast celebrities—also because they have their own pop stars. In Pennsylvania, for example, one of these states, a huge event for Christian rock takes place annually, the Creation Festival, about which the writer John Jeremiah Sullivan once wrote in a rather legendary report that there you can find Christian copies of almost all important rock bands. Of course, judging by what one reads, not everyone there is a crazed fundamentalist; many are even peace-loving hippies—certainly not evil people who have no songs.
However, reports about such mass events, far from music reporting, remind us that pop also occurs in arenas where people like Beyoncé don’t play. When Trump first ran for president eight years ago, many were shocked by the “more deeply divided than ever” nation of the late Obama years, whose striking power against all things progressive they had underestimated. Now, believing that Beyoncé, her like-minded peers, and all Dream Factory departments are working together for Kamala Harris and its pending Vice President pick (edit: Kamala picked Tim Waltz as his running mate on August 6th) would mean making the same mistake again, but with this newfound voter enthusiasm, we hope that we’re never going back.