What Can Kamala Harris’ Presidential Campaign Tell Us About the Current State of Pop Fandom?
Just under a week after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance – and one day before Independence Day – a “fancam” compiling Vice President Kamala Harris’ most memeable moments to Charli XCX’s brash electropop banger “Von Dutch.” Created by X user @ryanlong03, the clip combines clips of Harris proclaiming her love for Venn diagrams, quoting her mother’s idioms and dancing and laughing while Charli’s neon-green Brat filter flashes across the screen. “It’s so obvious I’m your number one,” Charli bellows across Easyfun’s blaring synths.
Unwittingly, the clip kicked off one of the most drastic shifts in public perception of a politician in recent memory. It also cemented a clear restructuring of the contemporary pop music hierarchy.
While Harris may not have always been people’s “number one” choice for the top of the Democratic ticket, pop music-driven memes have helped her ascend to that position in the minds of left-leaning online communities as she prepares to officially become the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, IL (Aug. 19-22). Along the road to the convention, the Harris campaign has tapped Megan Thee Stallion and Bon Iver for rally performances, used Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar’s “Freedom” as their official campaign song, and adopted the aesthetic of Charli XCX’s Brat album – which prompted a hilarious explainer segment on CNN. Pop music has never been more ingrained in U.S. politics – and it’s giving real weight to the voices of America’s youngest and newest voters.
Amid several ongoing global catastrophes, the climate crisis and the fight to codify a woman’s right to choose, the country has been understandably shrouded in a dark cloud of tension and anxiety going into November. Add an assassination attempt on former President Trump on a Saturday afternoon and President Biden shockingly ending his re-election bid eight days later, and you’re left with an electorate that exists in the context of reality’s best attempt at recreating Shonda Rhimes’ most ridiculous Scandal storylines.
According to an October 2023 study from Tuft’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, Gen Z (ages 18-27 in 2024) boasts 41 million eligible voters, including 8.3 million newly eligible voters who have aged into the electorate since the 2022 midterm election. Those are election-shifting numbers, especially in a race as close as this year’s seems headed for. The youth vote is vital – it’s an area where Biden was significantly lagging – and those young voters have completely shifted the election landscape by processing their fears, anxiety and general amusement at the sheer absurdity of the times through this summer’s most culturally resonant pop releases.
How’d they do it? In part because, if music is the universal language, memes – especially music-driven memes – are the Gen Z language.
As much as Brat revels in cheeky self-aggrandizement and party-girl reflections, Charli’s latest LP also grapples with some intensely personal ponderings. While her ruminations on potential motherhood, her position in the music industry and her personal grief aren’t necessarily the things causing the American electorate anxiety, her songs provide younger listeners a way to work through their own emotional anguish as it relates to their futures. Chappell Roan’s breakout album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess has allowed for similar impact on its young fans. Roan’s debut album explores myriad moods, but the emotional turmoil of growing up as a lesbian in a small Midwestern town looms over the entire record – perhaps a much more real analog to the way Gen Z feels heading into November, as they chart paths for themselves in a country that feels increasingly detached from their concerns, from abortion rights to gun control.
Not only are Brat and Midwest Princess driven by anxiety, but they’re also arguably pop culture’s two defining albums of the summer of 2024. With constantly recirculated lyrics like “Bumpin that” and “Should we do a little line/ Should we do a little key,” Brat finds Charli XCX at the peak of her cultural pull. The album cover’s funky shade of green has become the unofficial hue of the year, Pantone be damned. In the same week Brat became the highest-peaking album of Charli’s career, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200, Chappell’s record reached the chart’s top 10 for the first time, eight months after its October 2023 release. Assisted by a coveted opening slot on Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts World Tour and a stage show that effortlessly converted fans at every festival she appeared at, Chappell launched six Billboard Hot 100 hits off Midwest Princess – nearly half of the album! — from “My Kink Is Karma” (No. 91) to “Hot to Go!” (No. 17). In July, Roan also earned her first career top ten hit with the standalone single “Good Luck, Babe!” (which has since climbed to No. 6).
To varying degrees, pop music has always reflected the general mood of the population. Through the cultural and commercial success of Brat and Midwest Princess, Gen Z has helped significant pockets of the left-leaning Internet channel their political anxiety into a somewhat ironic, but still largely genuine, embrace of a new candidate suddenly offering an escape from the absolutely miserable election cycle that the Biden-Trump rematch seemed to promise – and the Harris campaign has taken notice.
In its first post since turning the official Biden campaign TikTok account into “@kamalahq,” the Harris campaign used Roan’s “Femininomenon” to highlight her as a fresh, new alternative to Trump. The day after Harris officially announced her election bid, the X account for campaign headquarters rebranded to fit the Brat aesthetic. In the words of Charli herself, “Kamala IS brat.” In an age where politicians are who we paint them to be, Gen Z has used this summer’s biggest albums to fashion Harris into a candidate that they can truly throw their support behind – whether it’s solely because of the draw of the memes or because anything seems preferable to the looming threat of a second Trump presidency.
Instead of trying to create an image for Harris, her campaign has let Gen Z create an image for her, simultaneously reasserting itself as a key voting bloc and reshaping the relationship between pop music and politics. In this way, Charli and Chappell have helped cement a new standard for era-defining pop stardom. Neither of them has seen a single from their most recent albums reach the Hot 100’s top 10, and their songs aren’t exactly pulling multi-week reigns at No. 1 across different radio formats, either. Rather, they’ve captivated the zeitgeist through fresh idiosyncratic aesthetics and outward rejection of traditional pop fame. After all, part of Chappell’s appeal is her explicit disdain for her ever-rising notoriety, and Charli preceded Brat with an album that cheekily satirized what the ultra-commercialized version of herself would look and sound like.
As the electorate continues to welcome large swaths of new, younger voters, a shuffling has begun to occur in the pop music hierarchy. While artists like Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar continue to enrapture younger listeners – both scored culture-shifting Hot 100 chart-toppers this year with “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “Not Like Us,” respectively – they also now appeal to a broader range of voters (age-wise) than they have in past presidential election cycles. Lamar, of course, made appearances on former President Barack Obama’s oft-memed summer and year-end playlists, and visited him in the Oval Office back in 2015 — but the years since the Obama administration have cast the rapper in a slightly different role. No longer an exclusively “hip” pick to attract young voters, Lamar, by virtue of his age and material, can reach scores of voters across age demographics.
The same goes for Queen Bey, who was riding high on the success of her Hot 100-topping “Single Ladies” when she performed at Obama’s first Inaugural Ball in 2009. In the years since, she’s performed the National Anthem at Obama’s second Inauguration (2013), played “Formation” at a rally for then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (2016) and took to her Instagram page to back President Biden (2020). At this point in her career, Beyoncé isn’t directly competing with flashy, younger stars like Roan — she’s something of an elder stateswoman at the intersection of pop culture, music and electoral politics. She’s still admired by the country’s youngest eligible voters, but she also commands the respect of Millennials, Gen Xers, and even some Boomers.
In this way, “Freedom,” her and Lamar’s 2016 Grammy-nominated anthem, was a natural pick for Harris’ official campaign song. The song has roots in the mid-2010s Black Lives Matter era, boasts a pair of artists whose blending of politics and music have been lauded (and critiqued for years) and gives the Harris campaign a way to temper the hyper-contemporary feel of their other musical choices. And, for what it’s worth, Bey and Kendrick – two respected Black music titans — are valuable and logical musical picks for a Black candidate whose campaign (at least at the very beginning) was largely defined by the white pop stars of the moment.
Then, there’s the Taylor Swift question. Under a special microscope this cycle because of her silence during past elections (she’s since expressed her regret for remaining mum in 2016 and endorsed the Democrats during the 2018 midterms), Ms. Americana has all eyes on her as November draws nearer. The historic success of her globe-conquering Eras Tour has packed out stadiums across the country. But will she remind her fans to vote? Will she tell them who to vote for? It shouldn’t really matter what Swift’s voting stance is, but it does – especially as political fandom becomes more and more insidious.
The Internet drives pop stardom and political fandom in the same way; choices are made on the basis of how invested a person is in a pop star’s or politician’s brand. In the same way that Swifties buy the umpteenth version of The Tortured Poets Department because they want to be as immersed in her brand as possible, Biden’s most steadfast supporters – who often cited their respect for his 50-year political career and him being an “honorable man” — refused to waver, despite polls showing that his appearance on the ticket could very well cost the Democrats the election. From pop stars to politicians, brand loyalty is the crux of how people engage with most things in America right now, and the 2024 election cycle is already solidifying that. Yes, there are millions of voters that are fully aware of the issues they are most passionate about – namely, gun control, abortion rights, the Gaza conflict and inflation – but the voices of voters who struggle with interacting with politicians solely as public servants who owe them (and not the other way around) are often just as loud, if not louder. The support the Harris-Walz ticket has been able to accrue is undoubtedly impressive, especially because, at press time, the ticket doesn’t even have a platform readily available on their official website.
In the days leading up to Harris officially taking over the top of the ticket, memes overlaying her trademark cackle over pop songs with laughing intros/outros (think: Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love” or Kesha’s “Blow”) took over TikTok and Twitter. On TikTok, an AI-generated Beyoncé song that turns Harris’ “coconut” anecdote into an original track plays in over 1,000 videos. Inspired by the “Win With Black Women” Zoom calls that have helped raise millions of dollars for the Harris campaign – and spawned similar calls amongst other identity groups – Swifties launched an @Swifties4Kamala X account that touts over 53,000 followers. Some Swifties have even (jokingly) inquired if they can use a VPN to vote in the election from outside of the U.S. Harris’ recently announced running mate – Minnesota Governor Tim Walz – has already been branded as the “Midwestern prince” (Chappell) to Harris’ “brat” (Charli). In the days since Walz joined the ticket, a camo cap with a design nodding to a similar product from Chappell’s online store appeared on the official Harris-Walz campaign website. Call it the Stan Twitterfication of U.S. politics, a reimagining of the cult of personality.
Naturally, part of Stan Twitterfication is projecting entire identities onto people; hours after the announcement of Walz as Harris’ running mate, American activist David Hogg took to X to write, “Tim Walz 100000% stands at his doorstep when it’s raining and says ‘we needed this.’” The day prior, another X user wrote: “Walz strikes me as the type of VP candidate who runs on a platform of making sure everyone knows how to safely change their own spare tire, and I love him for that.”
Whether or not these sentiments are rooted in the reality of Walz’s character is irrelevant. What’s interesting – maybe even damning – is that the kneejerk reaction is to romanticize Walz as a sympathetic and easily understood character rather than assessing his record as a public servant. It’s not that far removed from conversations around pop musicians centering their likability and relatability over their musical, vocal and instrumental prowess. But that’s the name of the game now – and the Harris campaign is smartly leaning into it. From the concept of a politician being “someone you can knock back a few beers with” to the proliferation of online political memes post-2016, this has long been the case in politics. In this election, the scale has increased and feels uniquely defined by and catered to Gen Z for the very first time.
As the Harris-Walz ticket gears up for the home stretch of the 2024 election cycle, they’ll likely continue their pop music-informed strategy. It’s not a bad choice, but it’s one they should exercise with caution – especially because they’ve already selected songs that could have invited a bit more controversy than they have so far. Everyone wants a piece of Brat, but it’s objectively mind-boggling to watch the presidential campaign for a major American political party adopt the aesthetic of a British artist’s coke-positive album. Chappell Roan is the year’s breakout pop star, but using her music for the campaign’s TikTok was a bold choice considering Roan declined an invitation to perform at the White House’s Pride celebration this year, citing her disapproval of the administration’s stance on the conflict in Gaza and transgender rights.
In that vein, “Freedom” is a pitch-perfect anthem on paper, but in the context of both Beyoncé’s and Lamar’s respective silence on global Black liberation, as it relates to Gaza, it rings a bit hollow. There’s also the matter of Lamar’s unavoidably massive “Not Like Us” — which Harris spoofed during a BET Awards commercial preceding her candidacy (June 30) — a Drake diss that has thrust conversations around regionality, race, ethnicity and cultural preservation into the spotlight, as Harris’ own race has become the subject of asinine questioning by her opponents.
If they intend to continue down this path, the Harris-Walz team needs to have their finger on the cultural pulse, but they can’t make it too obvious that they do – that’s when the pandering becomes unbearable. However the Democratic ticket proceeds with this race, their moves for the next few months are sure to further solidify the fact that politics is the new pop music. Ultimately, they’ll likely have to maneuver this campaign like a pop album rollout to secure the “Femininomenon” that they’re promising.
Kyle-Brandon Denis
Billboard
