From songs performed by Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen and Lee Greenwood to a WWE theme at a rally and stress-relieving playlist by R.E.M., here’s what the final sprint to Election Day sounds like. GPB’s Kristi York Wooten has more from the heart of the campaign action in Atlanta.
Presidential campaign music has a long history, and many musicians have performed for Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump this year. But over the past month and now in the final sprint before the election, music is reaching voters on and off the campaign trail.
Some of the biggest names in music have campaigned with candidates or have released projects supporting issues such as women's rights, voting rights, climate action and a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
On the morning after his Oct. 19 concert at State Farm Arena, Motown legend Stevie Wonder appeared at an Atlanta-area church to sing “Happy Birthday” to the Vice President. He also performed Bob Marley's “Redemption Song" as Harris looked on. The song offered metaphors about breaking free from struggles.
A few days later, longtime rocker Bruce Springsteen sang at a Harris rally in DeKalb County featuring former President Barack Obama. At that football stadium in Clarkston, Ga., east of Atlanta, Springsteen's poignant rendition of his song "Land of Hope and Dreams" roused the crowd.
The following evening, country legend Willie Nelson played for the vice president in Houston while superstar Beyoncé simply gave her endorsement.
Meanwhile, at former President Donald Trump’s Cobb Energy Centre rally in October, his supporters had a blast dancing to the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” That same week in Michigan, Trump walked onstage at his event using a WWE theme song for the wrestler The Undertaker and he invited country singer Lee Greenwood to play "God Bless the U.S.A." at his rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Sunday.
Original campaign music has been part of American politics since at least 1800, when the ditty "Jefferson and Liberty" was all the rage. In recent decades, candidates have adopted — and in some cases co-opted — songs to represent their ideologies.
Bill Clinton loved Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" when he ran for president and George W. Bush used Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down." To this day, Obama uses U2's "CIty of Blinding Lights" as his walk-on music — the band performed it at his 2009 inauguration concert.
Beyoncé allows Harris to use her song "Freedom" at rallies. But when Trump swayed silently to Rufus Wainwright's version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" on one of his campaign stops, the singer joined dozens of artists who have requested that Trump not play their music at his events.
Emory University political science professor Andra Gillespie said it’s not just partisan politics that makes artists protest use of their songs at rallies.
“When you have artists who don't want their music associated with certain types of candidates, they are doing so for a number of reasons,” she said. “One, they're worried about their own brand image, and they don't necessarily want to be associated with politicians with whom they disagree. It's also an intellectual property issue. This is a way for them to exert control by saying, ‘You can't use my voice to endorse things that I wouldn't personally endorse.’”
Georgia country singer Jason Aldean endorsed Trump at his rally in Gwinnett County last month but did not perform, and Billboard magazine reports that several other artists have come out in support of the former president, including singer Billy Ray Cyrus and rappers Kanye West, M.I.A., DaBaby and Atlanta-based Waka Flocka. Kid Rock performed at the Republican National Convention in July.
Writer Jon Kahn’s tribute song for Trump, “Fighter,” was released after the Butler, Pa., assassination attempt on the former president and hit No. 1 on iTunes in September.
The New Radicals, a group that supports Kamala Harris, reformed to write the new track, “Forward (We’re Not Going Back),” featuring Herbie Hancock, Ne-Yo, the Goo Goo Dolls’ Johnny Rzeznik and others with a cameo by actor Jeff Bridges. The band performed their 1999 track, “You Get What You Give,” at Joe Biden’s virtual inauguration in January 2021. That song was also used on social media during runoff elections that month to boost Georgia’s U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
Music beyond the campaign trail
Artists are utilizing a blitz of playlists, podcast, TV and film projects to motivate and comfort a stressed electorate and to bring attention to pressing social issues such as women’s equality, voting rights and environmentalism.
Georgia voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams and singer Selena Gomez served as producers on a women-focused music documentary called Louder: The Soundtrack of Change featuring Linda Ronstadt, Melissa Etheridge and Chaka Khan, which premiered on the streaming platform Max (HBO) in October.
Coincidentally, two of the biggest British bands of the 1980s Cold War era — Tears for Fears and The Cure — released new music over the past several days. The albums’ similar titles, the former's Songs for a Nervous Planet and the latter's Songs of a Lost World are unrelated to the U.S. presidential race and politics but capture the zeitgeist of the moment in songs like "Say Goodbye to Mum and Dad" and "A Fragile Thing."
English singer Paul Weller (The Jam, Style Council) spoke out against the Israel-Hamas war on his recent U.S. tour; Thom Yorke of Radiohead and The Smile, engaged with a protestor about the conflicts in the Middle East at his show in Melbourne, Australia earlier this week.
Athens, Ga., rock hall of famers R.E.M. posted a curated playlist of their music on Spotify called We Are Hope, Despite the Times, a line from their 1986 song, “These Days.”
R.E.M. also debuted a new video for a song from the same year called “I Believe,” to encourage everyone to vote. The video was created by art director and fellow Athens native Chris Billheimer.
Longtime R.E.M. advisor Bertis Downs said he hopes the video and playlist serve listeners well in a period of unprecedented levels of stress about the state of the world.
“In talking with the guys, we realized how many songs R.E.M. has about activism, work, democracy and voting,” he said. “And we were thinking, ‘Why not put these songs out there?’ I've gotten a few messages from people, one way or the other … and it's helped them kind of frame the way they're going to feel the next few days, next few weeks, whatever it is, in terms of their anxiety. Music is a really inspirational medium.”
