a presidential candidate with good taste in music??
on Kamala, brat, and Beyoncé
Music has always been a defining part of Presidential campaigning. Fight Song immediately brings you back to the uncomfortable trauma of 2016, cursed memories of the song that played at seemingly every Hillary rally. Signed, Sealed, Delivered makes you want to start a “hope-and-change” chant, even though years later that feels hollow. Bill Clinton’s oddly on-the-nose use of Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” as his campaign song. The constant battle for which party can lay claim to 9 to 5 - which, to be clear, belongs to no party and is a deeply pro-union song (and movie!) - despite Dolly’s emphatic political agnosticism. And then came 2024, one of the most chaotic weeks in US politics, and Charli XCX’s long-awaited breakthrough into pop’s upper echelons: brat.
The universe heard that I am a pop music girlie with a political communications masters degree and it said, have I got a summer cooking for YOU!
As painful as it is to see the brat album and aesthetic being explained to a cable news-watching, New York Times-reading audience, the coinciding Kamala Harris / brat meme with her suddenly becoming the Democrat’s front-runner, and now presumptive nominee for the presidency, is absolutely wild even to the most chronically online of us.
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This is far from the first time that a presidential campaign has attempted to tap into a meme to appeal to young voters, but it does seem like the most successful by far. Hillary Clinton’s stilted delivery of her “Pokemon-go-to-the-polls” instantly revealed someone who clearly had no understanding of the reference. Joe Biden’s attempt to reclaim the right’s “Dark Brandon” meme was weird in every possible way.
The Harris campaign embracing the meme, making her Twitter header in the style of the iconic brat cover, has shown a level of internet-literacy that only compares with Obama’s 2008 campaign and - for better or worse - Trump’s 2016 campaign. In a matter of hours, the campaign showed that it’s possible to run a traditional campaign appealing to the Democratic base, with big rallies and speeches and surrogates in suits and ties, while engaging directly with younger, online audiences. They embraced the creativity of the meme without palpable condescension, mockery, or outright disdain. Democrats need their base to turn out, but to win they need young people and they need women. They need brats.
As demonstrated by the painful clips of cable news trying to explain the significance of the meme, these audiences are so separate, messaging can be completely invisible if you aren’t part of the group being targeted. There’s plenty to be skeptical about there - the siloed, algorithm-driven bubbles we live in having nearly no cross-over has drawbacks. But it means that there’s no reason a campaign can’t appeal to different audiences in their own language! And to run a successful campaign, I’d argue it’s necessary in 2024!
This isn’t one-sided either: Charli XCX - of England - quickly weighed in:
For a singer who has been releasing music for over a decade, to take an unreserved, political stance on the internet is bold. It IS brat. Pop stars have long been told to follow the Dolly Parton model: say nothing political, threatened by the looming specter of a repeat of The Chicks’ early 2000s cancellation over comments against the Iraq War. brat is Charli’s hard-won breakthrough by any measure. There was no reason to embrace the politicization of her music in this moment, in a presidential election she cannot vote in. But she’s decided to bring Kamala with her in her moment of ever-presence online, without the shame or coyness or hesitation with which other pop stars have (often belatedly) entered the political discourse.
This week I revisited a 2018 interview with then-Senator Kamala Harris on the Call Your Girlfriend podcast (may it rest in peace!!) where she was challenged about constantly telling the press that the activities of the Trump administration were “troubling,” a favorite, cowardly word for Democrats during his presidency, instead of honestly saying what she really thought: “it’s a hot mess!” Honesty and admitted messiness aren’t supposed to belong in politics, but they HAVE to in an age where everything is public, all the time, and the stakes are so high. brat is mess!
brat is not the only pop culture reference that the Harris campaign has for us. The campaign’s first campaign ad features Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” off Lemonade, to great effect, reportedly with the queen’s approval. Kamala Harris is the first black presumptive nominee for the presidency. Using a song with iconic original visuals of Beyoncé performing this song standing on a plantation is no accident.
There was another video going around this week that featured Harris exiting a record store, showing off the albums she’d bought (and to pander to small business owners). There’s palpable joy about sharing music she likes with whoever’s behind the camera, and it really struck me. There’s so little joy allowed in buttoned-up politics - see every video making fun of her laughter - that it’s no wonder that young, music-loving people have lit up at the prospect of someone new in a presidential race that has felt like a death march for months.
I don’t write all this to lionize Harris - there are still substantive reasons to be skeptical of her position on supporting Palestine, on how far she’s willing to go to protect the environment, her “tough on crime” rhetoric, and so much more. If we were having a real primary, I don’t know that she’d be who I would support. Harris is still relatively moderate, despite what right wing media is going to try to push. But we need to understand that while you should vote for the least catastrophic option, especially for the presidency, voting is one of many tools we have to agitate for change. Voting is the minimum, not the goal. Write or call your representatives, especially when you disagree with them, go to protests, donate your time and/or money to organizations taking action on causes you care about. There is so much more than voting to a political life, and a lot of it you can do while listening to brat.
Memes are cringe. So is brat. It’s not elegant, it’s not polished. It’s the opposite of what US presidential politics is supposed to be: pantsuits and speeches and polite applause. I’m excited to see how the Harris campaign uses this energy in the next four months, and the excellent playlists that will come out of it.
Recommended
I have been thinking of Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies book about the political power of single women this week, but her latest on Kamala is a shorter read that’s worthwhile too.
I am first and foremost loyal to
’s publicist TikToks, but in absence of a Kamala one, this from Caitlin Reilly or em_august’s VP intern video really do the trick.Just some of the pop girlies who’ve gotten dragged into the memes that I didn’t mention: Taylor Swift, Chappel Roan, Kesha