Days before April’s New York Primary, thousands of young people descended upon Brooklyn’s WNYC Transmitter Park for a rally hosted by Bernie Sanders. The crowd packed into every last square inch of waterfront space on the windy Friday afternoon, clutching colorful signs and cardboard cutouts in the candidate’s likeness. To keep the crowd entertained, event organizers plugged in the aux and let the toe-tapping tunes flow. Over the next three hours, the speakers blasted Sleigh Bells’ “Rill Rill,” Janelle Monáe’s “Tightrope,” Rodrigo y Gabriela’s “Tamacun,” and countless others in a loop resembling Coachella-friendly elevator music. Between the circles of people raging to the Trampps’ “Disco Inferno” on the knoll (you know, Bern, baby, Bern), the front-row fist-pumpers decked out in Sanders gear, and the teens playing frisbee, the scene resembled a festival, not a political event.
To most of the public and the press, rally music—no matter how catchy or effective—exists solely as time-killing filler for keep the masses entertained if Secret Service hold up the proceedings. They’re not wrong—like lighting, seating, flag-colored decor, music is just another cog in the staging machine. But there’s also more to it than that. When executed properly, the musical lead-up to a candidate’s speech unifies the crowd under a common cultural experience, allowing them to transcend their demographic and idealistic differences, and seemingly come together as supporters. A killer playlist can provide a voice for the candidate in their absence, underscoring the ongoing ideas and identities associated with the politician at hand.
Candidates occasionally defer to outside parties to advise them on these campaign-trail playlists—a “selling-out” narrative that Rolling Stone happily entertained last February, when it reported that Clinton’s camp had doled out $90,000 to the Portland consulting agency Marmoset for a campaign playlist. The suspicions of oligarchical groupthink couldn’t have been more misplaced, apparently: The Clinton campaign had actually assembled the playlist in-house, and their check to Marmoset—one tenth of the amount originally reported—went to rights for background music for web videos, not rousing rally tunes. (Rolling Stone eventually updated the article, but didn't formally retract the claims.) So, if a focus group didn’t propose that the former Secretary of State play Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” (plus many other safe and relatively recent pop hits) ad infinitum along the trail, who did? “Our campaign playlist is the product of far too many email chains and passionate arguments by music fans across our staff,” Clinton spokesman Josh Scherwin told me. (Aside from striking down suspicions of focus-grouping with a quick “no,” he declined to elaborate on individual aspects of the playlist.)
Sanders’ team, on the other hand, was willing to pull back the curtain. A member of his Arts & Culture team put me in contact with former staffer Marc Levitt, one of the main folks behind Sanders' campaign playlist. He said it came together in the early stages of the race in collaboration with Revolution Messaging, a DC-based progressive media company that’s handled the bulk of Sanders’ digital advertising. From there, the group crafted a bricolage of classic rock, folk, punk, reggae, soul, and more. They also considered the Vermonter’s own preferences for classical music and Motown, at least to some degree. Unsurprisingly, Levitt said that many selections from the former genre proved to be duds within the context of a high-energy rally, and were cut from subsequent reiterations. The ubiquitous “Disco Inferno” didn’t show up on the list until last October, shortly after Sanders busted out some endearingly awkward dance moves to the song on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show."
Candid callbacks and personal favorites are a nice touch, but what matters most—unsurprisingly—is messaging. A good campaign playlist introduces a candidate's themes into the crowd’s minds before he or she even steps up to the podium; it’s the same idea as dog-whistling, only more insidious. Consider Clinton’s preference for girl-power pop like Demi Lovato’s “Confident” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” in her official campaign playlist, or that her team assembled a playlist of empowerment anthems by Beyoncé, Missy Elliott, M.I.A., Madonna, and more for Women’s History Month, with this simple description on Spotify: “A soundtrack for smashing glass ceilings.”
Sanders’ campaign playlist makes repeated references to middle-class angst and progressive politics in songs like John Lennon’s “Power to the People” and Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” Numerous songs with “revolution” in the title appear on Sanders' list as well, bringing Bob Marley, the Beatles, Steve Earle, Tracy Chapman, and Flogging Molly under the same ideological umbrella. Bernie’s doubled on the revolution angle in his musical cues: Diplo's “Revolution" also soundtracked a recent ad.
Sanders’ vice-grip on the youth vote has been well known since he earned the support of 84 percent of millennials who voted in Iowa’s Democratic Primary. That’s enabled organizers to get away with unorthodox trail tracks like Dead Kennedys’ ”Kill the Poor” and Muse’s “Uprising,” but it’s also attracted Republicans’ wrath. After organizers stuck Jill Sobule’s tongue-in-cheek, anti-xenophobia screed “We Want Our America Back”—whose refrain reads in part, “When they say we want our America back, well, what the fuck do they mean?”—into the mix at an Iowa rally, multiple conservative websites lambasted the candidate for playing the song, calling it “racist” and “America hating.” Although the supposed scandal never ignited on a national level, it nevertheless provides insight into why a frontrunner like Clinton would opt for U2 over even Kendrick Lamar. With the press, the public, and the opposition watching the former Secretary’s every move, a controversy over something as innocuous as a playlist selection is, ostensibly, the last thing she wants to be worrying about.
Instead, like Obama before her, Clinton has stuck to what Levitt calls the “American musical tapestry”: a modern canon of universal, inoffensive American anthems designed to resonate with voters of all ages and demographics. The Clinton campaign’s interpretation of musical populism, more or less like Sanders’, prizes multicultural and cross-generational unity. Unlike Sander’s, however, Clinton’s voter base comprises a greater percentage of women, minorities (especially women of color), and older voters. Accordingly, her New York Primary victory celebration at a Manhattan hotel featured everything from classic heartland rock (Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp) and R&B (Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys) to contemporary pop sung in English and Spanish (Katy Perry, Marc Anthony), and folk-pop for the millennial set (American Authors, twice).
What Clinton’s list lacks in hipness and direct references to “revolution,” it makes up for in representation, particularly along gender and race lines. Compared to his opponent’s selections, Sanders’ list contains fewer songs by women and people of color. Clinton’s playlist also favors musicians who’ve shown their support publicly for her, from Katy Perry to John Legend to Bey, while Sanders’ bevy of specific support from indie-leaningartists is not as reflected in his rally playlists (though, for the record, Jello Biafra is a Bernie supporter).
With the last of the primaries taking place today and next Tuesday, and Clinton now having enough delegates to secure the nomination, Sanders’ playlist won’t be in rotation much longer, but Clinton’s has six months’ worth of rallies to go. That might come as bad news for politicos who’re tired of Sara Bareilles and other adult-contemporary radio favorites, but compared to the classic rock tunes blaring loudly from the speakers at Donald Trump’s packed events—nothing screams “Make America Great Again” like Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”!—such choices seem equally tepid. And yet, somehow, Trump's hand-selected mix, which Washington Post’s Chris Richard described as “authoritarian hold music,” hasn’t drawn the most positive response from voters. The crowd at a Cadillac, Mi. event this past March started up a chant of “turn it off!” one hour after the organizers pressed play. Coupled with the ever-growing list of cease-and-desists from artists unhappy with Trump's co-sign (including Neil Young, Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, and Adele), the musical component of Trump's campaign actually reflects his run overall: It's mired in controversy and hate.