With all of the e-mails, signs and annoying solicitations from the Leader of the Free World, you can sometimes forget that it’s all about getting you out to vote. So that you don’t feel that dropping feeling in your stomach when you see your coworkers prancing around wearing "I Voted" stickers, here’s fair warning: Vote tomorrow. (See the This Just In blog for more about what’s on tomorrow’s ballot.)
The arrival of Election Day is also a time for reflection, and for the purposes of this blog I ask: How did the candidates use music in their campaign? Politicians have long used the music to unite groups in common cause—their cause. The question becomes, how to harness music’s communal spirit in a way that reflect’s the candidate’s agenda? It’s tough work, and it usually means a whole lot of "Don’t Stop Believin’" and Sheryl Crow’s "A Change Will Do You Good."
At first things looked like they might take a turn for the weird in our district, where taste runs from joyful indie rock to tear-in-my-beer country, with lots in between. Republican nomination was still up in the air last year, FairTax advocate and Lynchburg native Bradley Rees announced that "Bulldozer" by the metal band Machine Head would soundtrack his ascension to Capitol Hill.
He clearly had his finger on the pulse of Virginia.
Soon it became clear that the 5th District contenders would use music as others have always. Behind every attack ad lurked a grave string arrangement, or else some sinister compositions that suggests a kind of behind-the-scenes evil. But as time wore on the Dems broke the musical mold, slamming Hurt with an animated campaign ad that accuses Hurt of attempting to "waltz into the White House." You know they’re serious when they namedrop the genre that keeps in the decidedly highbrow 3/4 time.
The ad’s soundtrack is more like a polka, a carefree and pizzicato-happy that would be well suited to slapstick comedy.
Well-chosen, indeed.
The Perriello camp recently released this song by a group called The Perriello Pickers (who may have to break up tomorrow), called "Tom Perriello for the Common Good." It’s a sweet little ride on the bluegrass express that fashion the incumbent’s virtues in a song that would satisfy vast range of constituents in the 5th District: "Perriello, for the common good, Perriello for the change we need. From the hills of the Piedmont, to the hills of the South Side, the choice for you and me."
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?