From Charli xcx memes to fan-made covers interpolating her well-known “coconut tree” quote, Kamala Harris’s last-minute presidential bid in opposition to Republican candidate Donald Trump has had an enchanting and outsized relationship with pop music.
Numerous progressive singers, like Ariana Grande and Olivia Rodrigo, have pledged their help. Katy Perry provided one in every of her newest singles, “Girl’s World,” for the present vice chairman to make use of in her marketing campaign, although Harris doesn’t appear to have taken her up on it. In the meantime, Harris’s employees has discovered methods to make use of pop music to draw Gen Z voters, having Megan Thee Stallion carry out at an Atlanta rally and totally embracing brat memes. This onslaught of memes and coconut-themed “remixes” has nearly overshadowed essentially the most essential music-related choice concerned in Harris’s candidacy: her marketing campaign tune.
Final month, it was reported that Beyoncé permitted the Harris (now Harris-Walz) marketing campaign to make use of her tune “Freedom” that includes Kendrick Lamar. Since then, the rousing gospel-tinged anthem from her 2016 album Lemonade has soundtracked Harris’s rally entrances and can inevitably be heard a number of instances at this week’s Democratic Nationwide Conference. On the final day of the DNC, there was even hypothesis that Beyoncé herself may make an look. Whereas the singer was in the end a no-show, their long-awaited public team-up is lastly occurring at a Harris rally on October 25 in Houston, the place she’s reportedly slated to carry out. Following her last-minute becoming a member of of Hillary Clinton on the marketing campaign path in 2016, the impression of Beyoncé’s presence can be fascinating to see.
The fashionable marketing campaign tune has turn out to be its personal character — and goal of inspection — in election politics. Most of those songs have already achieved reputation outdoors of the marketing campaign path, in order that they must be very important sufficient to re-energize constituents. Additionally they need to be memorable and on message, embodying the values and guarantees of the candidate. However are they really helpful? What does it imply for a tune to belong to a marketing campaign?
Put up-Trump, pop music can be one thing that Democrats have been capable of leverage in opposition to the proper — not simply large hits themselves however endorsements from the artists who make them. Conversely, there’s a Wikipedia web page of musicians who’ve opposed Trump’s use of their music on the marketing campaign path, along with opposing him as president. Nonetheless, the outcomes of the 2016 presidential election have made the general public second-guess the ability of pop music on this sphere.
Regardless of this skepticism, Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, an affiliate professor of music at Georgia Faculty, argues that music might be an efficient medium for politicians. “Whereas it won’t drive individuals to the polls, music fashions methods of being on the planet and connecting with others,” she says.
This interview has been edited for size and readability.
For a marketing campaign like Harris’s that has largely trafficked in “good vibes” and likability over discussions about coverage — the vice chairman simply unveiled her coverage agenda — Harris’s marketing campaign playlist gives an fascinating window into what she represents and which populations she’s relying on for help. As Jonquilyn Hill wrote for Vox, Harris’s proximity to Beyoncé might even sign how she plans to conduct herself.
I spoke to Gorzelany-Mostak to get extra perception into Harris’s musical alternatives and the general operate of marketing campaign songs. Her ebook, Tracks on the Path: In style Music, Race, and the US Presidency, printed final yr, charts notable marketing campaign songs and the way these musical moments are used to articulate race.
When did presidential marketing campaign songs actually turn out to be a factor?
The election of 1840 was a watershed second for the marketing campaign tune. The supporters of Whig candidate William Henry Harrison promoted singing as a campaign-worthy exercise, and so they printed small booklets referred to as “songsters” with pro-Harrison lyrics. These candidate-inspired lyrics have been set to the favored tunes of the day.
What goes into selecting a marketing campaign tune? Is the candidate even immediately concerned on this course of?
It varies relying on the marketing campaign. In 2008, Barack Obama’s staffers had the candidate’s music tastes in thoughts when choosing his playlist. There was continuity between the artists he mentioned in interviews on the path and his rally playlist, which included Earth, Wind & Fireplace, Stevie Marvel, and the Isley Brothers. Donald Trump is understood to pick out his personal soundtrack for marketing campaign rallies, and when off the clock, he “spins” from his iPad at Mar-a-Lago.
What’s the operate of a marketing campaign tune, and why do marketing campaign songs matter?
Candidates use music to represent their id in sound, to sonically assemble themselves in a approach that appeals to the general public in addition to presents perception into their character and their beliefs.
A marketing campaign tune is greater than its lyrics. Candidates want to consider the myriad methods songs may sign messages in political contexts. This implies bearing in mind the artist’s biography, the composition and character of the artist’s fan communities, the connotations hooked up to the tune’s style, and naturally, the meanings a tune has accrued by its presence in different media. Whereas pundits might privilege the spoken phrase or pictures, sound and music might be simply as highly effective persuaders.
Total, marketing campaign music preaches to the choir. I don’t suppose it converts individuals or drives them away.
In Tracks on the Path, you write about candidates articulating race by music. What do you suppose Kamala Harris is making an attempt to convey by selecting songs, each previously and at the moment, by high-profile Black girls?
Black feminine artists kind the spine of Harris’s 2024 rally playlist — Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Lizzo, Megan Thee Stallion. Harris elevates a matrilineal paradigm of Black excellence that spans 60 years.
This can be a notable distinction to the classic-rock-dominated Republican Nationwide Conference final month, which featured a band of getting older male rockers enjoying covers of the Eagles, Kenny Loggins, Grand Funk Railroad, Steely Dan, and the Doobie Brothers. Trump has questioned Harris’s management cred and her racial id, so Harris makes use of her soundtrack to disrupt this narrative by leaning into the very id that he critiques.
Harris’s earlier marketing campaign tune, Mary J.Blige’s “Work That,” is much more light-hearted and enjoyable, in tone and message, in comparison with Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” which is a extra austere, pressing tune. How do you suppose these songs replicate the variations in these campaigns and even the broader political local weather?
“Freedom” does convey a sure degree of urgency. However extra broadly, Harris’s playlist reminds voters that they’ll acknowledge the nation’s painful historical past, decide to the intense work that must be performed, however nonetheless sing, snicker, and dance alongside together with her on the trail to victory.
A lot of Harris’s playlist consists of dance music, from Diana Ross and The Brothers Johnson to Dua Lipa and Bruno Mars, to not point out the more moderen sounds of Charli xcx. To people on the proper, disco may sign the hazards of hedonism. However a style that finds its roots within the leisure tradition of Latinx, Black, and homosexual communities, it additionally factors to a wealthy historical past of resistance and hope — although these sounds have lengthy since been domesticated, as evidenced by their presence in your mom’s fitness center playlist.
It isn’t shocking that a few of the movies of Harris set to Charli xcx’s music present the candidate laughing, dancing, or mid-gaffe — Trump himself has even criticized Harris’s laughter. By infusing her playlist with unfettered expressions of pleasure and pleasure which can be Black, queer, and/or female-centered, Harris manages to wrest the reins away from the male-centric gerontocracy, if solely on the dance flooring.
I discover there’s a dissonance between the breezy, light-hearted tone of Harris’s marketing campaign and the way in which it has been memed by Gen Z with the austerity of a tune like “Freedom” — to not point out, “Freedom” is hardly one in every of Beyoncé’s hottest songs. Do you suppose this alternative is a misstep?
Regardless of its extra austere tone, I do suppose “Freedom” is an efficient match for Harris. It brings collectively loads of narratives that align together with her marketing campaign message and the presidential model she is making an attempt to domesticate.
“Freedom” adopts an nearly prayerful tone in its adoption of gospel signifiers and its textual reference to the non secular “Wade within the Water.” Within the non secular, water represents the chance for escape in instances of enslavement. In “Freedom,” water additionally comes within the type of “rain” and “tears.” This alludes to the aftermath of Beyoncé’s private turmoil and the cultural trauma of New Orleans post-hurricane and of Black communities impacted by mass incarceration. The tune additionally samples the voices of a mid-century prisoner and preacher, and Jay Z’s grandmother opening up about her personal hardship in 2015.
In selecting “Freedom,” Harris is situating herself and the 2024 election within the lineage and the sound world of those transhistorical struggles, each private and political.
It looks like Beyoncé‘s co-sign is possibly extra highly effective than the tune itself.
Beyoncé herself is a logo of female energy, endurance, and vitality. Her music defies categorization. She writes her personal guidelines and repeatedly reinvents herself. So it’s no shock that Harris desires to align herself with such a story as she embarks on her personal reinvention from prosecutor to district legal professional, to legal professional common, to senator, to vice chairman, to president of the US.
Replace, October 25, 11:30 am ET: This story was initially printed on August 20 and has been up to date to incorporate a report by the Washington Put up that Beyonce is predicted to carry out at Harris’s rally in Houston.
