After finding MC Yogi’s sonic missive I decided to find out how far music has made its way into this seasons politics. Turns out, there is quite a divide.
Obama has a fairly large and musically talented following. McCain’s followers on the other hand appear to be less musically inclined. What is not clear is whether this divide is a simple difference in musical talent, or whether it reflects more on the medium of distribution: the Internet. One possibility is that Obama supporters are just more net-savvy than McCains, hence the apparent discrepancy in sheer production numbers. That doesn’t account for the vast difference in the quality of the productions though.
Perhaps Obama is spreading the wealth down to musicians, or maybe some positive 527 action? This is a possibility, but seems unlikely given the nature and passion behind the music. It really does seem that Obama is more able stir the passions than the more staid McCain – let’s see if this translates to more voters.
What follows are some of the better examples I managed to find for both Obama and McCain.
Obama in Music
There are just a ridiculous number of extraordinarily talented musicians in the Obama camp, and almost all with a positive message; much less mud-slinging than McCain’s supporters. Aside from the inspiring MC Yogi, we also have some other really well produced themes, particularly from “will.i.am”, with this:
Along with this more mellow effort, also from will.i.am, in which we see the liberal use of snippets of Obama’s speeches.
And then back to the more aggressive rap side the fence, we have “Big Hit Buda”:
And then we move into less well known territory with “Boy Major”, but with still keeping with some excellent production:
And now off into alternate rock style, with “Seth McLain”:
Less hard-hitting, moving into the Blues arena, with slight lower video quality is the “John P. Kee”, and this from “Reggie Harrison”. Even Swing makes an appearance, with Will Galison.
Of course the stars make their appearances, with an intro by Stevie Wonder “Street Lights Musical”, and then Seal, who does a retake of the 60’s civil rights classic, Change is Going to Come, Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame (not one of his better songs), even the Bono/Beyonce live version.
And then of course we have the negative, anti-Bush sentiment. Interestingly we don’t see so many anti-McCain songs. Of course, we have Eminem with Mosh, and another from Usher.
And the list basically goes on, seemingly for ever:
- Da bass rap, with “Chubb Rock”
- High school rap from 3kz (One Voice Obama & Clinton Join Together)
- Springstein in the act with his Dylan hat, long-assed speech and all
- Zydeco makes an appearance in French with Whirly Bird Brand
- Wyclef tries some multi-linguistic rap
- Soul with KC/Big Mike
Borderline, “Go Tell Mama - I’m For Obama!”, and moving into the scary ones, even the well produced scary ones. Watch at your own peril.
There are even lists of music videos, by genre:
McCain in Music
It was pretty tough finding quality sounds for McCain. Search as I might, I just couldn’t find much in the way of McCain theme songs. If you find any of good quality please let me know. The list is just too short.
One of the better ones I could find is from country singer, John Rich:
Most seem to focus on Obama, and are pretty poor quality, and some, are just out of line: “Raining McCain”, and simply get worse, and worse.
Many are more in tribute format, and typically slower paced, or county (from Rooster Rocks), but it’s tough to tell if they are parodies, or actually for McCain.
Unfortunately some of the best ones are parodies from the other side, with will.i.am again:
Of course, McCain has his scary supporters too.
Dance Off
And in lighter news, we have the dance-off.