Dems Had Own Rock Stars

Under any other circumstance, if there was a widespread rumor — supposedly verified by legit news sources — that Beyoncé was going to perform at an internationally televised event, only to have the evening proceed with no mention or trace of her, it’d feel deflating. But that airy sound you heard across the land Thursday night wasn’t the sound of a whiff… it was a mass sigh of relief. (At least that’s a sensation that I’m guessing might have been more universally shared than not.) The news journalist in me was hoping that she or Taylor Swift would make an appearance at the Democratic National Convention; the political pragmatist who feels an actual stake in this election was praying the two of them would be making it a C-SPAN-and-chill night. Part of the savvy of being a superstar is recognizing those moments when the world says it wants you but it really doesn’t, not right at this second, at least.

This Democratic National Convention was an exceptionally well-produced one, and that extends to a treatment of star entertainers that could be described as, for lack of a better term, conservative. There were big stars, but not too big — no offense to Pink, who is currently headlining stadiums, but who knows as well as any of us that her nicely placed acoustic number is not going to dominate a news cycle. (Although it was fun to speculate for a minute that Kamala Harris might make her entrance doing a trapeze act with the pop star.) The inherent dangers are in overshadowing, but also in the inevitable backlash against a surfeit of “Hollywood elites.” The approach of producers Ricky Kershner and Glenn Weiss to using entertainers, generally, as well as musicians, specifically, seemed to be: Sprinkle lightly, just for seasoning… and for just enough cachet to gently remind viewers that, sure, the vast majority of people in the arts are on your side. In a different year, they might’ve needed to load up. But as anyone this side of Scott Jennings would have to admit: In 2024, the DNC had its own surplus of rock stars, with the glory of oratory as their Spotify genre.

The 2020 DNC, the pandemic-era one that some will loosely remember as the “Zoom convention,” actually had some hipper and/or younger music choices — think Billie Eilish, whose “My Future” was such a great pick at the time. Some might have felt it was a step back to keep the focus for the ’24 convention largely on elders: Common, who came up in the ’90s, almost counted as a new artist amid this crop. But there’s something to be said about a political convention that isn’t trying too hard to pull a Steve Buscemi-style “How do you do, fellow kids!” Embracing Charli XCX in the world of brat memes is brilliant; making a show of programming hyperpop in prime-time might not be, however much. If the convention is going to be a four-night infomercial, what it’s going to sell will be essentially centrist; different, edgier kinds of salesmanship can find their place on the interwebs, or in the world of endorsements and concert benefits to come.

Conservatism in music choices can have its own cleverness. One thing the musical picks of the DNC and RNC had in common — surely the only thing — was how they both leaned in hard on country music. Of course, at the Republican National Convention, that was kind of a joke: Apart from Kid Rock, who counts as an honorary country artist (much to the chagrin of most genre fans), and Lee Greenwood, who has a legit-classic song (albeit one that was buzzier when Reagan used it in the ’80s), RNC had to settle for the likes of Chris Janson and Brian Kelley, the Andrew Ridgeley of Florida Georgia Line. (Not counting the actual star Jason Aldean, who deigning to take a seat next to Trump but couldn’t be bothered with a performance slot.) If you wanted to pick out a single nadir in the history of political conventions, there’s a case to be made for it being Kid Rock adapting his profane and homophobic classic “American Badass” to rap: “I know it stinks in here, ’cause Trump’s the shhhhh…”

Meanwhile, the DNC made highly effective use of emphasizing the more liberal side of what’s seen as a conservative genre. When I addressed this subject in my 2005 book “Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music,” I pointed out how afraid Democrats seemed to have historically been to make use of country songs or musicians, all the way up through Al Gore, who seemed averse to the genre even though he was from Tennessee. There’ve been some correctives to that in subsequent years, like Barack Obama stealing Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America” away from the Republicans. (If memory serves, the GOP did steal it back at some point.)

At this week’s DNC, there was no mistaking the deliberateness of employing several artists who either are or were part of the country music world or in associated genres. Notably, there were two acts who used to be superstars of mainstream genre who have felt pushed out because of their social and political views, the Chicks (nee: Dixie) and Maren Morris. Of course, the Chicks becoming national pariahs goes back more than 20 years now — they were the first and still all-time champions among mass cancel culture victims — while Morris’ status in country is still a bit on the bubble, since she admitted feeling alienated from the genre after tangling with Aldean’s wife in a public dispute about trans kids. The presence of these two artists neatly paralleled the frequent use of speakers throughout the convention who still identify as distressed conservatives, like former Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Stephanie Grisham, who beseeched their fellow Republicans to see that the Harris/Walz camp is the patriotic place to be.

Jason Isbell is not a country artist, per sem though he was often identified as such in the press this week — but listen, when you’re from Alabama and sing with an accent in front of a giant American flag and Morgan Wallen sings one of your songs every night, close enough. The Americana-style rocker (to pick a lane for him) provided the first musical performance of the convention and beautifully set the tone with “Something More Than Free,” an anthem of working man’s pride but also a lament for the exhaustion that overextended blue-collar workers face. It represented the values of the grandparents of so many current GOP members in the South, where previous generations skewed Democratic, with hope and heart but also a bittersweet realism. However much it might have been taken by most viewers as just a country singer in front of a barn, to anyone who follows these things, it felt like a reclamation.

Mickey Guyton may be the artist who had the most to risk by playing the DNC, as the one performer who still has both her feet squarely planted in mainstream country. Read the comments on her social posts and you’ll see half supportive comments and half “I’m throwing all your music away” — from “fans” who never bought it in the first place. But she may have figured, if the requests aren’t coming in at radio anyway, why not do the bolder thing and support the candidate who looks, feels and takes stands more like you than any in history? Kamala Harris has crashed through her glass ceiling, and Guyton is doing the same with hers. And if singing as unifying and nonpartisan an anthem as “All American” pisses off part of your potential audience, what a beautiful way to alienate.

If anything, the two dominant styles of the DNC’s playlist were country and R&B. These two styles do make the world, or at least America, go around, historically and into the present day, so nothing wrong with that. The convention was light on the rock side, but if you watched a feed without any network commentators butting in, you did get to hear Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” played loudly and on repeat after Tim Walz’s speech. (With permission.) With a Prince tribute, in honor of Walz’ home state, John Legend got to skirt the rock/R&B divide. (Now, if only doing Prince in the modern day didn’t mean having to pick Sheila E. or Wendy & Lisa and not being able to get both.) Stevie Wonder and Patti LaBelle are as close as we’re going to get to the O.G. playlist in Harris’s mother’s apartment — predictable, yes, but no notes, when higher ground is literally and figuratively involved.

I would not argue with anyone who wished there were hip-hop artists represented who got their start more recently than the 1990s… while also recognizing that, as a politically progressive and safe-for-work artist, Common does not have enough big-name contemporary heirs as he ought to to pick from, and his elevating presence is never unwelcome. Meanwhile, it probably didn’t escape anyone that the most viral performance of the convention came in at less than two minutes: Lil Jon‘s surprise cameo in the middle of the states’ roll call DJ-ed by DJ Cassidy, with Jon adapting two of his biggest hits to incorporate the Harris/Walz ticket while representing Georgia. That virality made up for a multitude of MIA hip-hop.

For pure superstar pop at the convention… well, there was Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” showing up in DJ Cassidy’s states medley to represent Guam. But it’s OK if the DNC decided this particular event needed to be the culmination of everyone’s brat summer.

The most representative thing we got from that realm was Pink — performing not “Get This Party Started,” thank goodness, but her finest song, the gorgeous and haunting “What About Us,” an actual protest song dating back to the early days of the Trump era. She could have been speaking for Kinzinger or Stephanie Grisham or any of the disaffected Republicans when she sang, “We are problems that want to be solved / We are children that need to be loved / We were willin’, we came when you called / But man, you fooled us / Enough is enough.” One hesitates to use the phrase “anthem for a generation” lightly, and this one probably never quite caught on enough to technically qualify. But it’s a corker, and kudos to the DNC producers for picking this as a table-setter for the convention finale.

Would the convention have made use of Swift’s or Beyoncé’s services, if they’d stuck their hands up and begged to come? Probably. (We’re guessing that the DNC did not actually tell them to stay home.) But in the end, musical picks are like VP picks — you want something or someone that puts things into turbo but isn’t in danger of racing ahead of the leader. Who would have wanted that Harris speech to be overshadowed by whoever introduced or played before her? Well, Republicans would have — that’s who — to make hay of the Democrats needing props to get through the week. Endorsements, or more, from those artists will surely come, just as they did four years ago, and they will get their own moment when momentum is needed — whatever Bey or Tay do will seem nearly as explosive when it gets its own moment, or possibly more so. Everybody loves an October surprise, even if, in this case, the campaign might settle for September.