In an election that, at least according to the pre-voting polls, appears to be the tightest in modern American history, seemingly every semi-famous to famous person is trying to make a small dent of difference.
Celebrities came out of the woodwork in the final weeks of the campaign to overwhelmingly endorse Kamala Harris; meanwhile, Patrick Mahomes’s mother cheered on Donald Trump at the Kansas City Chiefs’ election-eve football game. Celebrity endorsements are, as I wrote over the weekend, a double-edged sword for Democrats, projecting at turns strength and advantage, at others elitism, desperation and ominously high levels of corniness and self-importance. Especially when the endorsements involve one celebrity advocacy avenue that falls mostly on the negative side: celebrity election songs.
There hasn’t been a wave of starry musical numbers for the election – no Imagine video equivalent for Harris, at least at the time of writing – but a handful of songs, generally from older artists aiming at older, somewhat online voters, that is missing the “Kamala IS brat” zeitgeist. On Monday, Will.i.am released Yes She Can, an acoustic “heartfelt anthem” in support of Harris. In a black-and-white video, the rapper denounces Trump – “People entertained by the predator / we used to be united in America / now we just divided in America” – and encourages people to “vote for your life / do it for your daughters and your sons and your wife” in surface terms. “If you’re a woman then vote for your rights / and don’t let them take away your rights,” he says over footage of protests for reproductive rights outside the supreme court. The song is a spinoff, of sorts, to his even cringier Obama-era election single Yes We Can, featuring an extremely 2008 selection of celebrities – including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend, Common, Kate Walsh, Nicole Scherzinger and One Tree Hill’s Bryan Greenberg – singing over footage of Obama’s signature campaign speech.
Stevie Wonder, who has stumped alongside Harris, took a similarly over-earnest tack, emphasizing unity in a country where many see that as beyond the pale. The 74-year-old singer launched a 10-stop tour in the month running up to the election; the Sing Your Song! As We Fix Our Nation’s Broken Heart tour called for “joy over anger, kindness over recrimination, peace over war” and featured an original song, Can We Fix Our Nation’s Broken Heart, that encouraged listening, compassion and coming together through difference. “’Cause if we listen to different thoughts and points of views / All my brothers and sisters, we don’t have to lose humanity / We’re family, so can we please / Fix our nation’s broken heart?” he sings. “We’ve been floating alone in a dark and bitter cold / ’Cause there’s a growing ocean of lies that we’ve been told to tear us down / But what I’ve found is with our truth, compassion, and love / We can fix our nation’s broken heart.”
Parks and Recreation’s Nick Offerman, by contrast, went in for the skewering. In August, the actor, who memorably portrayed a gun-toting libertarian on the NBC sitcom, released Proud to be a Kamala Man, a parody of Trump’s beloved Lee Greenwood track God Bless the USA, in which he dismisses the former president as a “half-assed Putin wannabe” and a “fuckin’ dick”. Other artists have taken a more oblique but still obvious direction. Pearl Jam recently released a song called Wreckage that, according to Eddie Vedder, may or may not be about Donald Trump. (Lyrics like “Oh, visited by thoughts and not just in the night / That I no longer give a fuck who is wrong and who’s right / This game of winner takes all and all means nothing left / Spoils go the victor and the other left for dead” feel … apt.) As voters headed to the polls, Beyoncé – perhaps the most high-profile celebrity endorsement for Kamala – released a music video, of sorts, for her Cowboy Carter track Bodyguard that saw her vamp up as Pamela Anderson in Baywatch and Barb Wire for Halloween, with a final image that just said: vote.
All of these feel somewhere between self-congratulatory, superfluous, or too terminally earnest – it’s tough to craft an anthem or a message for an election in which, for many, cynicism reigns supreme. Arguably the most effective election songs are ones that reference a specific issue or a too-easily forgotten past. REM, for one, released a new lyric video for their 1986 song I Believe that featured footage of the band’s decades-old statements in favor of reproductive rights, gun control, voting rights and alternative energy sources. The video, posted a week before election day, included a message from frontman Michael Stipe: “I believe the choices in this election could not be more stark or more important. Please vote and encourage everyone you know to do the same – that is how we win in 2024 and I believe we can do it!!!”
And at the end of September, Stevie Nicks released her track The Lighthouse, a rock-tinged tune she began developing in the immediate aftermath of the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade, in an election where abortion access will be a defining issue. In the song, which Nicks said “may be the most important thing I ever do”, the former Fleetwood Mac singer calls for younger women to know their history, and fight for their rights: “I want to teach them to fight / I want to tell them this has happened before, don’t let it happen again,” she sings. “They’ll take your soul, take your power, unless you stand up, take it back / Try to see the future and get mad.”
It’s not surprising that almost all of these election tunes come from older artists, while younger ones – Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo – make their support known online, in the internet’s preferred mode of authenticity that does not tip into full earnestness. Others, such as Chappell Roan and MUNA, have continued to draw attention to the war in Gaza – an issue on which Harris has struggled to court younger voters – by withholding their full-throated support for the vice-president.
Not that election songs will, ultimately, make more of a difference than any other celebrity endorsement tactic, which are already dubiously effective. If anything, they’re another way to kill time – to cringe, to laugh, maybe to feel – as we all wait to see what’s next.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage
