A roar of applause and cheers filled the Washington Convention Center as a decisive trumpet flourish heralded the start of “My Way,” a song popularized by Frank Sinatra some 50 years prior. On the center’s stage, Donald and Melania Trump drew each other near and began to sway.
The first dance is a long-standing tradition at U.S. inaugural balls, a moment of tenderness and triumph between the new First Couple. One of the first choices a new commander-in-chief makes is the song to which this dance will take place. Curiously, it is not an overtly political act — it’s a musical one.
But is there a difference?
Trump’s first-dance song selection was the subject of public controversy. Perhaps the tone of “My Way” — one of self-determination, adamancy, and arguably a touch of narcissism — was fitting for the conclusion of Trump’s insistently populist, fiercely polarizing campaign. But Nancy Sinatra, the daughter of the song’s famed crooner, took issue with its use at the inaugural ball. Referring to the lyric “And now, the end is near” in her response to the first dance, Sinatra wrote to Trump in a since-deleted post on X, formerly known as Twitter, “just remember the first line of the song.”
In the U.S., both music and electoral politics are omnipresent. Our day-to-day lives are steeped in song; as we pace the aisles of the grocery store, as we enjoy a meal at a restaurant, as we languish in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, as we engage with the online videos and advertisements with which the digital age bombards us. And we are always prompted, if subtly, to think of the next election; as we drive past lawn signs for candidates in local races, as we receive a steady stream of donation-seeking emails from our party of choice, as our library adds yet another politician’s memoir to its shelves.
Inevitably, given their ubiquity, these two forces will intersect. Our constant exposure to music and music’s ability to appeal to us on our most personal, emotional, human level, makes it one of the most powerful rhetorical tools candidates can wield. And because of the personal nature of music, the songs we listen to often reflect the electoral politics that shape American life and become woven into our social fabric.
To IU history professor Eric Sandweiss, this intersection is fundamental to American culture — and nothing new.
“The cultural aspect of elections is almost impossible to extricate from their politics,” Sandweiss said. “American political and popular culture are completely intertwined, and of course they always have been.”
For centuries, U.S. candidates for office have used music to appeal to voters in a succinct, accessible and engaging way. In 1932, during his first of four successful presidential bids, Franklin D. Roosevelt used “Happy Days are Here Again” as his campaign song, a pointed choice in light of the Great Depression. In 1960, John F. Kennedy’s campaign song was the Frank Sinatra hit “High Hopes,” with lyrics changed to support Kennedy explicitly.
One of a political candidates’ central challenges is reaching as many corners of the public, to whom the world of politics is often obscure or uninteresting, as possible. The relatable, easily digestible nature of music can help bridge the gap between candidates and prospective voters.
“Popular and political culture are not one and the same, but the latter depends on the former in order to operate across a really broad and diverse population,” Sandweiss said. “Candidates are trying to make use of the public’s hunger for images they can relate to, be excited by, and understand.”
Indeed, image is key. A candidate’s “oversimplification” of who he or she is and what he or she values helps demystify the choices voters must make on Election Day. That these images maybe sacrifice authenticity, like when William Henry Harrison ran for president in 1840 as the “log cabin candidate” "log cabin candidate" even though he was a highly educated, well-to-do Southern gentleman, is a secondary concern.
“Politicians’ appeal to voters is done through cultural resonance more than it’s done through policy,” Justin Patch, associate professor and chair of music at Vassar College, said. “Even if you don’t have a vocabulary that you can use to understand social problems, you have an aesthetic vocabulary that’s always available to you.”
In many ways, then, music is one of the most democratic ways candidates can reach would-be constituents. Songs are readily accessible not only “materially” but intellectually and emotionally, bringing more of those perhaps otherwise disengaged into the political fold.
But it’s not just songs that draw in voters. Musicians themselves, revered cultural figures, have tremendous social — and, by extension, political sway.
“Increasingly, you see the ‘rock star’ campaign event where you have 20,000-50,000 people in a stadium. You have to get those people excited, and most political rhetoric is not the stuff that gets people worked up,” Patch said. “Musicians ‘get people there’ for a candidate in the emotional sense.”
Although celebrities are often admired by the public, celebrities’ lives often seem alluringly distant from more commonplace experiences, and their constant presence in our cultural sphere makes them seem more relatable and familiar to us than politicians might. To Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, associate professor of music at Georgia College and State University, musicians speak to us not only by generating excitement in, say, performing at a campaign rally, but also by personalizing the political in advocating for certain candidates and causes.
“Because of the ubiquity to the exposure we have to celebrities, a lot of us feel we ‘know’ a celebrity in a certain way, so a celebrity endorsement can be powerful,” Gorzelany-Mostak, who founded Trax on the Trail, a website and research project tracking music in U.S. presidential elections, said. “Celebrities model ways of being that can have an impression on everyday citizens, not just in voting but getting people to care about the causes they care about.”
While the political influence of musicians and their art may extend beyond voting, the droves of musicians who have voiced their support for either Trump or Kamala Harris during the 2024 race make evident that elections are a particularly consuming cultural event. The pageantry that surrounds U.S. presidential contests is no accident: fanfare is an integral part of our elections.
Entertainment is not just a part of our politics — our politics is entertainment.
“A campaign is about creating a spectacle, about creating a multi-sensory experience,” Gorzelany-Mostak said.
Music, of course, is critical to creating such an experience. And the use of music in elections brings to mind other forms of sociality and show.
“There is a carnival quality to democracy, and that is good and should remain that way; people can apply it toward the meaningful decisions that organize their society,” Sandweiss said. “But when we vote for somebody based on how he or she makes us feel solely, rather than on what difference he or she will make in our lives, we risk losing our basis for democracy.”
On Nov. 5, our deeply polarized nation will elect a new leader. The results will reverberate across our social and cultural landscape; in the conversations we overhear, in the articles we read and in the songs to which we listen. A paradigm-shifting, critical juncture for our country. And then, in a few months, the race toward 2028 will begin.
Our national carnival. Come one, come all.
