Dems Had Their Own Rock Stars

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Under any other circumstance, if there was a widespread rumor — supposedly verified by legit news sources — that Beyoncé was going to perform at an internationally televised event, only to have the evening proceed with no mention or trace of her, it’d feel deflating. But that airy sound you heard across the land Thursday night wasn’t the sound of a whiff… it was a mass sigh of relief. The news journalist in me was hoping that she or Taylor Swift would make an appearance at the Democratic National Convention; the political pragmatist who feels an actual stake in this election was praying the two of them would be making it a C-SPAN-and-chill night.

This Democratic National Convention was an exceptionally well-produced one, and that extends to a treatment of star entertainers that could be described as, for lack of a better term, conservative. There were big stars, but not too big — no offense to Pink, who is currently headlining stadiums, but who knows as well as any of us that her nicely placed acoustic number is not going to dominate a news cycle. The inherent dangers are in overshadowing, but also in the inevitable backlash against a surfeit of “Hollywood elites.” The approach of producers Ricky Kershner and Glenn Weiss to using entertainers, generally, as well as musicians, specifically, seemed to be: Sprinkle lightly, just for seasoning… and for just enough cachet to gently remind viewers that, sure, the vast majority of people in the arts are on your side.

The 2020 DNC, the pandemic-era one that some will loosely remember as the “Zoom convention,” actually had some hipper and/or younger music choices — think Billie Eilish, whose “My Future” was such a great pick at the time. Some might have felt it was a step back to keep the focus for the ’24 convention largely on elders: Common, who came up in the ’90s, almost counted as a new artist amid this crop. But there’s something to be said about a political convention that isn’t trying too hard to pull a Steve Buscemi-style “How do you do, fellow kids!” Embracing Charli XCX in the world of brat memes is brilliant; making a show of programming hyperpop in prime-time might not be, however much. If the convention is going to be a four-night infomercial, what it’s going to sell will be essentially centrist; different, edgier kinds of salesmanship can find their place on the interwebs, or in the world of endorsements and concert benefits to come.

Conservatism in music choices can have its own cleverness. One thing the musical picks of the DNC and RNC had in common — surely the only thing — was how they both leaned in hard on country music. Of course, at the Republican National Convention, that was kind of a joke: Apart from Kid Rock, who counts as an honorary country artist (much to the chagrin of most genre fans), and Lee Greenwood, who has a legit-classic song (albeit one that was buzzier when Reagan used it in the ’80s), RNC had to settle for the likes of Chris Janson and Brian Kelley, the Andrew Ridgeley of Florida Georgia Line.

Meanwhile, the DNC made highly effective use of emphasizing the more liberal side of what’s seen as a conservative genre. When I addressed this subject in my 2005 book “Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music,” I pointed out how afraid Democrats seemed to have historically been to make use of country songs or musicians, all the way up through Al Gore. There’ve been some correctives to that in subsequent years, like Barack Obama stealing Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America” away from the Republicans.

At this week’s DNC, there was no mistaking the deliberateness of employing several artists who either are or were part of the country music world or in associated genres. Notably, there were two acts who used to be superstars of mainstream genre who have felt pushed out because of their social and political views, the Chicks (nee: Dixie) and Maren Morris. Of course, the Chicks becoming national pariahs goes back more than 20 years now — they were the first and still all-time champions among mass cancel culture victims — while Morris’ status in country is still a bit on the bubble, since she admitted feeling alienated from the genre after tangling with Aldean’s wife in a public dispute about trans kids. The presence of these two artists neatly paralleled the frequent use of speakers throughout the convention who still identify as distressed conservatives.

Jason Isbell is not a country artist per se, though he was often identified as such in the press this week— but listen, when you’re from Alabama and sing with an accent in front of a giant American flag and Morgan Wallen sings one of your songs every night, close enough. The Americana-style rocker (to pick a lane for him) provided the first musical performance of the convention and beautifully set the tone with “Something More Than Free,” an anthem of working man’s pride but also a lament for the exhaustion that overextended blue-collar workers face. It represented the values of the grandparents of so many current GOP members in the South, where previous generations skewed Democratic, with hope and heart but also a bittersweet realism. However much it might have been taken by most viewers as just a country singer in front of a barn, to anyone who follows these things, it felt like a reclamation.

Mickey Guyton may be the artist who had the most to risk by playing the DNC, as the one performer who still has both her feet squarely planted in mainstream country. Read the comments on her social posts and you’ll see half supportive comments and half “I’m throwing all your music away” — from “fans” who never bought it in the first place. But she may have figured, if the requests aren’t coming in at radio anyway, why not do the bolder thing and support the candidate who looks, feels and takes stands more like you than any in history? Kamala Harris has crashed through her glass ceiling, and Guyton is doing the same with hers.

If anything, the two dominant styles of the DNC’s playlist were country and R&B. These two styles do make the world, or at least America,