KEY POINTS:
What do the following songs have in common? High Hopes by Frank Sinatra, Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel, Don't Stop by Fleetwood Mac, I Won't Back Down by Tom Petty, City of Blinding Lights by U2 and You and I by Celine Dion.
They have
all been used as campaign songs by American presidential hopefuls.
Back in 1960, the implausibly upbeat High Hopes soundtracked John F. Kennedy's unstoppable surge to the White House.
In 1972, the deeply melancholic Bridge Over Troubled Water somehow became the theme song of George McGovern's doomed attempt to unseat Richard Nixon. (Nixon, intriguingly, had a song tailor-written for him by two good ol' boys, Moose Charlap and Alvin Cooperman, entitled Nixon's the One. Unlike its subject, it failed to impact on the American collective consciousness.) In 1992 Bill Clinton, the baby-boomers' choice, opted for Fleetwood Mac's 70s soft-rock classic Don't Stop, while George W. Bush incensed liberal rocker Tom Petty by turning I Won't Back Down into a hawkish battle cry for the 2000 presidential campaign. On election night, Petty pointedly reclaimed the song by performing it in person to Al Gore just moments after the Democrat contender conceded defeat.
This time around, though, the choice of campaign songs has been even more intriguing. Barack Obama, who belongs to the iPod generation, went into shuffle mode early on, rotating U2's City of Blinding Lights with Stevie Wonder's Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours and Bill Withers' Lovely Day.
The ill-fated Democrat John Edwards also chose a U2 song, the older and even more anthemic Pride (In the Name of Love).
That it was written as a kind of celebratory elegy for the Rev Martin Luther King hardly seems to matter here - it's the thump and thrust of the song, the chiming, cascading chords that do the trick.
Remember Ronald Reagan's appropriation of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA in the 80s? It's not so much what the song says that matters, but how it says it.
Which brings us to Celine Dion's You and I, a song that is neither thumping nor cascading, but shrill and maudlin. It is, in fact, one of the most abominable songs in Celine's vast canon of epic cheesiness. And, for a moment there, it was Hillary Clinton's campaign song.
What was she thinking? And why didn't Bill have a word in her ear?
Intriguingly, You and I turns out to be the only campaign song to be chosen by democratic means. Back in May 2007, Hillary appeared on a YouTube video asking the American public to help her decide what her election anthem should be. The choices included - who else? - U2 (City of Blinding Lights and Beautiful Day), as well as Shania Twain (Rock This Country!), the Staple Singers (I'll Take You There) and, intriguingly, the Dixie Chicks (Ready to Run).
Celine, though, was the people's choice. Talk about a tough lesson in the limits of democracy.
When the influential political blog the Huffington Post voted You and I the worst campaign song of all time, the Clinton team finally got the message and the song was abruptly "disappeared". It has since been replaced by Blue Sky by Big Head Todd and the Monsters. (No, me neither.)
Can the choice of a campaign song tell us anything at all about a candidate's state of mind? On one level, it's an index of credibility as well as political savvy. Hillary Clinton, as her choices illustrate, struggles with both.
When she tries to get down with the voters - and young voters in particular - she ends up lumbered with one of the worst songs in the history of popular music; a big, old-fashioned tear-jerker. Could it be that the public perceives Hillary Clinton on some subconscious level as the Celine Dion of politics: shrill, over-emotive, fake?
Obama, though, is definitely down with the kids. And the older generation. Recently, as his campaign has gathered momentum, he has started walking on to City of Blinding Lights and walking off to Ben Harper's Better Way.
These songs suggest that Obama's camp is effortlessly hipper than Clinton's and that the man himself has, uniquely for a politician, some sense of what's cool and what isn't. The Ben Harper song is probably on his iPod; Celine Dion is probably not.
What, though, if the artist objects to his song being appropriated by a politician?
Apparently, there is not much he or she can do other than voice their disapproval, as Springsteen did.
Songs, once released, take on a life of their own. Even the greatest songs, though, can be diminished by inappropriate use. It happens all the time in TV advertising, where classic songs by the likes of Marvin Gaye and Nina Simone have been used to sell jeans and yoghurt respectively. It takes a long time for a song to break free of that kind of misappropriation.
Then again, you could argue that a song like Born in the USA or City of Blinding Lights, are, by their stridency and swagger, just begging to be used as rallying cries. You could even argue that the songs are given new life and meaning by their secondary use.
I doubt, too, if Ben Harper, who seemed doomed to folkie cultdom, is displeased by Obama's sanctioning of his song, which has brought him to the attention of the mainstream.
It's a long way from High Hopes, though. Or maybe not.
- Observer
