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Political Pundit Dave Mustaine

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Last night press representatives of Dave Mustaine sent out a statement clarifying the Megadeth frontman's recent supposed-by-not-really endorsement of Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

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via YouTube

​Yesterday, President Barack Obama's team released a Spotify playlist for his 2012 re-election campaign, announcing it via every form of social media imaginable. According to an announcement that accompanied the more traditional means of releasing political information—a leak—the playlist will ostensibly be used "for crowd events (rallies, ropelines, etc.)."

Efforts to decode its message have generally focused on breaking the playlist down by genre, with the assumption that, in the words of the Atlantic's David Graham, "this list is carefully calibrated to appeal for optimal demographic appeal—age, gender, geography, race, and socioeconomics." But such mercenary calculations would be a far blunter tool than what the Obama campaign seems to be doing here. Instead of just trying to signal a cultural affinity with voters through shared tastes in music, this playlist captures the broader cultural identities in which music plays an important part but is far from the whole shebang.

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​After a dismal showing at yesterday's Iowa caucuses, one-time Republican Presidential front-runner and "interesting person" Michele Bachmann announced today that she was ending her campaign to be sworn in as Commander-in-Chief next January. Once the brief press conference disseminating the news ended, Bachmann walked off the stage... to the strains of "Hey, Soul Sister," Train's wistful song about hummers and hot chicks at Burning Man that was voted by Chris Weingarten and me to be the worst song of 2010. Perhaps Bachmann was seduced by the idea of seeming "soulful" as she accepted her defeat, or maybe she just really likes ukuleles, but the song choice was most unfortunate—as the opening line that not-so-subtly references a lipstick stain on Pat Monahan's genital area should have told, I don't know, anyone who was working on her campaign and understands the uttered English language? Sure, it was good for a laugh or two, but the six songs below might have been better choices—at the very least, they (for the most part) save the oral-sex references until after the chorus has been run through once.

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​Last night as part of keeping my musical resolution about not falling in the trap of listening to old music and not new stuff I ran a Spotify search for music from this calendar year, and topping the list was a song apparently called "Perry 2012." Being that my roommate is a political reporter who was awash in the news of the Iowa caucuses as I conducted my search, I assumed that the song was actually about Rick Perry, the Texas governor turned GOP presidential hopeful who was in the process of coming in fifth in the Hawkeye State as I typed. And so I hunkered down in my chair and listened, and... the song didn't sound that bad? It melded thumpy chart-pop bounce and the aesthetics of the the label Slabco's charming bedroom synthpop offerings in such a way that it reminded me of a somewhat more twee update of the word-light, yet catchphrase-heavy 1991 techno breakthrough "James Brown Is Dead." Clip after the jump.

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​For those people who adore Kelly Clarkson and hate Ron Paul supporters, the inaugural American Idol's Wednesday night endorsement of Paul's presidential candidacy was especially painful. The move might have been merely confusing in years past, when Paul was a web-specific phenomenon—the equivalent of Carrie Underwood using a ragecomic as her next album cover, or Perez Hilton having a record label—but the recent exposure of Paul's startlingly racist and homophobic newsletters from the 1980s shifted Kelly's gung-ho Paulophilia from quirky to offensive. It turned out that Clarkson (apparently honestly) didn't know about Paul's issues, but the course of excusing her endorsement raised a host of other problems. The resulting Twitfit played out like a weird kind of crossover special, including a co-sign from Michelle Branch, a sullen @-reply to music critic Matt Cibula, and Clarkson's revelation that she is a pro-Obama Republican. The stormy response was heartening, if also predictable (what books will Ron Paul supporters recommend I read in responses to this post? Leave your answer in the comments!), and both Clarkson's and Branch's responses to the criticism—that whether or not Paul was prejudiced, they certainly weren't—were helpful little distillations of the issues inherent in collectively supporting a presidential candidate who doesn't believe in doing things collectively.

In retrospect, though, the endorsement makes a depressing amount of sense, and not just because Clarkson and Paul are fellow Texans. For all the supposedly progressive politics of rock and pop, the structure of the business is incredibly entrepreneurial, with musicians required to front a remarkable amount of their own money for instruments, travel, and recording before they see any sort of return on their investment. There's no large-scale structure that can provide steady employment (and health insurance) while nurturing innovation, just a produce-or-die ethos that receives no subsidies or grants. In America, at least, one of the few areas of life in which government really does have minimal involvement is pop music.

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​Monday night the Republican Presidential candidate and frequent source/target of Photoshop japery Michele Bachmann appeared on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon in an effort to promote both her autobiography and her appearance at last night's Presidential debate. As a rebuke to the Minnesota congresswoman's somewhat slippery relationship with the truth, Fallon's house band the Roots—who aren't always into shying from making a "why is this person even here?" counterpoint with their choice of introductory music—decided to dust off an old chestnut by the skacore pioneers Fishbone as she walked onstage. "Aight late night walkon song devotees: you love it when we snark: this next one takes the cake," ?uestlove tweeted before the show aired Monday. "ask around cause i aint tweeting title."

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TV On The Radio's Kyp Malone at Occupy Wall Street Monday

​Radiohead, everybody knows, didn't play a free show for the Occupy Wall Street protesters last Friday. But there's been a stream of high-profile musicians showing up in Zuccotti Park to offer their support.

This afternoon, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary set up on a makeshift bandstand and played a set with some friends, serenading the occupiers with "Puff, the Magic Dragon," "If I Had a Hammer," and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"

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​"You may remember a couple years ago that Pepsi hired gansta (sic) rapper Ludacris as a commercial pitchman. [I] objected, saying major American corporations have an obligation not to reward people who harmed society...Unlike Ozzy Osbourne, who curses, or Britney Spears, who's an immature exhibitionist, Ludacris is hard-core. He glorifies criminal conduct, and kids hear this stuff."—Bill O'Reilly, 2004.

It didn't matter that Ludacris had mostly been known to hip-hop and cross-over pop audiences as a comic rapper, an exaggeration of a cartoon character. It didn't matter that Ozzy Osbourne had fucked up kids, two of whom went to rehab (Jack in 2003, Kelly in 2004), and that Britney Spears brought trucker hats and bald vaginas into style. No, it was Ludacris who was the villain.

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​On Friday, we talked about how Beyoncé's participation in Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" program showed how the Obamas were interested in including a wider (and younger-skewing) swath of culture in official political life. On Saturday, President Obama's speech to the White House Correspondents' Association offered even more evidence. It was a shrewd move on Obama's part; though the event is ostensibly closed, Internet-disseminated videos of its speeches have been a postmortem fixture since Stephen Colbert's elaborate Bush satire in 2006. These speeches have become a way for presidents to temporarily drop the gravitas they're required to carry as symbolic heads of state and give the public an idea of their private character. Obama knew that the routine would be seen; moreover, he knew that he'd ordered the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, and in retrospect, you can see the swagger. He used the opportunity not only to utterly destroy Donald Trump, but to signal his cultural allegiances in subtle but powerful ways.

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​You may have been surprised to learn, in our chat last week with NY gubernatorial candidate/Internet sensation Jimmy McMillan, a/k/a the "Rent Is Too Damn High" guy, that he's got both a soul-singer background and a brand-new album, The Rent Is Too DAMN High, v. 1, due out tomorrow, a/k/a Election Day. The Times is now kindly hosting an ostensible sneak preview, which frankly has to violate some sort of media/campaign law, no?

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