What Kamala Harris and Donald Trump's music choices reveal about election campaigns

When you look at the campaign soundtracks heard at Harris and Trump's campaign rallies, it's easy to see a contrast. On the one hand, voters are presented with classic American music, with tracks from decades past that are battle-tested to evoke strong emotions and inspire the hopeful sense of nostalgia that suggests a return to a time when listeners were younger and happier. On the other hand, voters hear some of today's most popular artists come together in a multicultural mix that sometimes veers into lyrical and thematic directions that might have made Tipper Gore blush, but reflect the America of 2024.

After Team Harris was brought back into the race with Beyoncé's blessing (but not her actual support), the campaign is closely intertwined with current pop music. Days after the campaign was launched, Charli XCX simply tweeted “Kamala IS a brat” – and linked the candidate to the British pop star's popular album. brat — was viewed around 9 million times in four hours. The campaign cleverly took up this pop culture reference and adapted the campaign logos to the brat light green background of the cover.

And what better way to define Harris than with a little hip-hop and R&B, to harness some of that #BratEnergy and electrify the increasingly important youth voters, the anyone-but-him faction, and those disillusioned by the advanced age and retro mentality of the party's previous two front-runners?

“I'm more of a hip-hop girl,” Harris told her running mate Tim Walz, comparing her music and that of her husband in a meet-and-greet video posted around the time he was running for the ballot. “He's more Depeche Mode. But in the Venn diagram of things, Prince and I love the same thing because… considering how Prince was with that guitar, man. I know almost every one of those songs by heart.”

Prince, a mega-talent from the Midwest who defied the odds to become a huge success, is probably the perfect answer Harris could give when asked about her favorite artist. Given her short campaign timeline, Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, is an outsider. At her rallies, both during her primary campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2020 and now, Harris' inner hip-hop girl danced or sang along to the carefully curated music blaring from the speakers. Migos, Rihanna's “We Found Love,” Nicki Minaj and Lauryn Hill's “Doo Wop (That Thing)” ring out amid funk, classic soul and modern gospel-pop tracks, creating a mix that recalls music Harris says she grew up with (her mother got Aretha's latest record every Christmas) and that catches the attention of younger voters.

Walz's penchant for Steely Dan and Bruce Springsteen is more in line with the artists announced for the DNC's opening night. On Monday afternoon, singer-songwriter James Taylor, country singer Mickey Guyton and folk/Americana star Jason Isbell were announced as performers for the first night of the convention. (Taylor's performance was canceled, however, as organizers struggled with scheduling issues that also pushed President Biden's speech outside of prime time; The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to the campaign to see if his date will be rescheduled, as the rest of the week's artists have yet to be announced.)

The performances on the first night of the DNC don't fit Harris' playlists, but are likely more reflective of the party as a whole than its new candidate. Or perhaps it's telling that they were scheduled for the day that both Joe and Jill Biden were scheduled to speak.

This month, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has released an analysis of a selection of songs collected from recent campaign appearances by Harris and Trump in Minnesota and Wisconsin. The results suggest that the Harris campaign favors black, female artists and pop music, while the Trump campaign favors white, male artists and rock music. That's not surprising. But looking closer at the numbers, the difference between these two camps and the Americas they represent seems to become clear: Team Harris' music is ethnically diverse and current, and Team Trump's music is white and what you might call “oldies.”

At the Harris campaign rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, which featured global indie darling and local hero Bon Iver, 13 of the 32 songs played were by female solo artists and nine of the songs were by male solo artists. The campaign played 17 songs by black musicians or all-black groups, 10 by white artists or all-white groups, and four by mixed-race artists or groups. And the team played “Let's Get Loud” by Jennifer Lopez, making her the only Latino artist whose music was played at the event.

Meanwhile, according to the StarTribune, Of the 35 songs the Trump campaign played at a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, 27 were by white musicians or all-white groups, and 25 were by male musicians or all-male groups. Trump, meanwhile, has been hit with multiple cease-and-desist letters, which appear when a song by an artist with a dissenting political view is played at a MAGA event. A former member of REM said they were considering legal action when their hit “Losing My Religion” was played at a Trump rally; then came a direct legal threat from Isaac Hayes III after Trump played a song written by his father, the Sam & Dave hit “Hold On, I'm Comin',” at no fewer than 135 of his rallies, he said. The Hollywood Reporter this week. The list of artists who oppose the use of their work by Trump's campaign or his administration even has a Wikipedia page.

In addition to the Sam & Dave classic, Trump has also expressed nostalgia and patriotism with Lee Greenwood's “God Bless the USA,” which repeats the rousing phrase “proud to be an American.” Before Trump began playing the song in his campaign speeches, it was already a staple of the presidential campaign. Ronald Reagan had played the 1984 song at times in the 1980s, and then-Vice President George HW Bush later played it during his 1988 campaign. It was also a chart-topping hit during the Gulf War and after 9/11.

The past, and all its glory, is relevant to MAGA movements, where the economy once provided both meaning and health care and a culture prevailed in which it seemed inconceivable that a mixed-race woman could become vice president. Trump succeeded in banking on that sentiment in 2016. But a study released in October by Tufts University's Center for Information and Information on Civic Learning found that 8 million young Americans will grow into voting rights in 2024. “This is a politically active generation that can have a major impact on elections,” said a press release about the study, which also shows that “about 45 percent of Gen Z voters in 2024, including 47 percent of newly eligible voters who have grown into voting rights, will be youth of color.”

Perhaps the songs that are ubiquitous in election campaigns give less of an impression of how the candidates see themselves and more of who they think will run and vote for them.