Political Campaign Songs

One of the truly wonderful things about the political campaign season is the amazing amount of political entertainment that comes about. This includes commercials, giant rallies and the focus of this article, political campaign songs.

During this particular campaign season everything seems magnified by the presence of candidate Trump, especially when it comes to campaign songs. A couple of dust-ups occurred when the Trump campaign used one of Neil Young's songs at some campaign rallies. Apparently Young took some exception to that and asked Trump to stop. Next Steven Tyler got into the act by asking Trump to not use Arrowsmith's song, "Dream On," which seemed to be more of a theme song since it wasn't really written for the campaign. After that mini tempest Trump has decided to use glam band Twisted Sisters song, "We're Not Gonna Take It."

But there are plenty of unofficial Trump songs; Mac Miller comes to mind. Trump himself did not really endorse the song as the lyrics are pretty crude, however Trump did voice his opinion that the song only had 30 million views on YouTube, which was apparently below The Donald's standard. No sooner had Team Trump uttered those words than the view total climbed over one hundred million, thus getting into an area that can share The Donald's rarefied air. But other humbler Trump songs that are very excellent and are not in the least vulgar are out there such as the "Mr. Trump Song."

While Trump mixes theme style songs with songs actually written about him other candidates generally stick to theme style songs for their campaigns. If you are you looking for more info on Election songs look into our web-site. The most memorable is probably Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1932 campaign theme song, "Happy Days Are Here Again." Harry Truman used "I'm Just Wild About Harry," which was actually written in 1921 for a Broadway Musical.

But the campaign songs that are best are the songs that actually name the candidate and are no longer theme type songs. The first and best of these types of efforts has to be Frank Sinatra's John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign song in which the Sinatra reworked the lyrics to "High Hopes" by sticking Kennedy's name in it. It was a lark, but with that amazing big band behind Sinatra's voice, well it sounded fantastic! The song had all the vitality and fun that we associate with the Kennedy campaign and presidency. Sinatra seemed to have done the impossible combining politics with pop music without sounding cornball.

Lyndon Johnson tried to follow in the footsteps of the Kennedy song by having Ed Ames rework the "Hello Dolly" song by Louis Armstrong into "Hello Lyndon." This rendition was not very good, very cornball, and unfortunate in the light of LBJ's failed presidency.

This brings up to some better attempts in recent years at political song writing, most notably John Lennon's "Come Together," which he started to write for Timothy Leary's gubernatorial campaign in California. That effort came to an end when Leary was arrested, however John Lennon was able to rework Come Together into a great hit for his band The Beatles, which came out on the hugely successful album Abbey Road.

Maybe in the end Trump has found the right mixture of theme style campaign songs, original songs, and goofy songs. However the election turns out, the campaign music circus will be missed.