Music, candidates have uneasy alliance

So let’s say it’s the early 1980s, and you’re a rising young musician named John Cougar Mellencamp. You cut a song with a chorus that oozes Jeffersonian democracy and adds a touch of postwar suburban placidity. “Ain’t that America - for you and me,” you sing in your gravelly Indiana voice. “Ain’t that America; we’re something to see. Ain’t that America: home of the free. Little pink houses for you and me.”

Now let’s say you’re a strategist for Sen. John McCain, Republican candidate for president in 2008. You hear “Pink Houses” 25 years after it was recorded and think to yourself, “Hey, this is perfect. Let’s blast this out at the big guy’s rallies and hitch our wagon to Mr. Mellencamp’s imagery.”

That scenario proved problematic when it unfolded earlier this year. First, Mr. Mellencamp is a Democrat and activist who has supported John Edwards. He didn’t like his work being co-opted and asked McCain to stop. Second, and just as important, “Pink Houses” is an edgy, melancholy song about chances lost and potential wasted:

“‘Cause they told me when I was younger, said, ‘Boy, you gonna be president.’ But just like everything else, those old crazy dreams just kind of came and went.”

For someone coveting the White House, that’s not exactly staying on message.

In the 21st century, music and politics exist at an intersection as volatile as the lonely crossroads in Mississippi where bluesman Robert Johnson supposedly bartered his soul for guitar prowess. And let’s not pick on Mr. McCain, He’s but one victim - or perp - of this music minefield.

For a generation, candidates who have tried to dip their toes into the pop-culture ocean have tended to fall in. “Happy Days Are Here Again” may have worked for FDR in 1932, but ever since Reagan asserted in 1984 that Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” was a patriotic paean, Democrats and Republicans alike have revealed tin ears as they try to set mood, convey message and show that they, too, are regular people attuned to the same mass entertainment as their fellow Americans.

And in doing so, they offer glimpses into the national temperament.

“Interesting thing about campaign songs: They mirror the life of America. It’s as if we’re taking snapshots,” says Oscar Brand, an 88-year-old folk musician and radio host who recorded an album of campaign music ranging from the eras of George Washington to Bill Clinton.

Mr. Brand, though, focused mostly on what prevailed until roughly John F. Kennedy’s time - songs crafted expressly for the candidates, among them “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too,” “Lincoln and Liberty” and the mercifully obscure “Get on a Raft with Taft.” These days, the zeitgeist dictates that candidates invoke existing tunes. We’ve seen how that turns out: Shouldn’t presidential hopefuls bother to get a culture maven to idiot-proof song choices - or, at the least, print out a lyric sheet?

George H.W. Bush’s 1988 co-opting of Bobby McFerrin’s ironic smile music - “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” - was about as astute as a helmeted Michael Dukakis poking his head out of a tank. His son’s re-election theme in 2004, “Still the One,” seems nice until you hear the verse, “sometimes I never want to see you again.” Same with one of Barack Obama’s 2008 choices, U2’s “City of Blinding Lights,” which features this line: “The more you see the less you know, the less you find out as you go.”

Often the songs are played in fragments as attempts to capture a mood rather than convey a message. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has used pieces of Tom Petty’s “American Girl” and Mr. Mellencamp’s “Small Town” to convey the basic imagery of their titles. At a recent rally in a Pittsburgh suburb, her husband came on stage to the Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.” What the other lyrics might be didn’t much matter.

Missteps are understandable. Candidates and handlers are fumbling their way through the untamed frontier territory of iPod Nation, a confusing geography where remix culture, sampling, shuffles and playlists rule the day and context is often absent. In a prepackaged, portable, drive-through culture, is it any wonder that they go for the microwave meal instead of baking from scratch?

“These songs are a quick and easy substitute to establish a connection between candidates and voters,” says Sean Wilentz, a leading presidential historian and scholar of American musical traditions.

“This music is everywhere,” Mr. Wilentz says. “And if you can choose the right song that can capture a bit of your message and a bit of your essence, you’re going to choose it.”

Story Continues →