Don't Stop Thinking About the Music: The Politics of Songs and Musicians in Presidential Campaigns

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Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction Why Music Matters Part One: The Traditional Era of Campaign Music
Chapter 1 : The Early Use of "Campaign" Music (1789-1840)
Chapter 2 : Campaign Music Post Tippecanoe (1844-1916) Part Two: The Mass Media Era
Chapter 3 : Women's Suffrage&"Wireless" Technology (1920-1948)
Chapter 4 : Good Night, And Good Luck (1952-1968)
Chapter 5 : Campaign Music Transitions to the Pop Era (1972-1984) Part Three: The Popular Music Era and Beyond
Chapter 6 : The "Canned" CampaignSong (1988-2004)
Chapter 7 : Facebook, YouTube, & MySpace, Oh My! (2008 and Beyond)
Chapter 8 : Campaign Music of the Past, Present, and Future
Bibliography
Index About the Authors

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In this insightful, erudite history of presidential campaign music, musicologist Benjamin Schoening and political scientist Eric Kasper explain how politicians use music in American presidential campaigns to convey a range of political messages. From “Follow Washington” to “I Like Ike” to “I Got a Crush on Obama,” they describe the ways that song use by and for presidential candidates has evolved, including the addition of lyrics to familiar songs, the current trend of using existing popular music to connect with voters, and the rapid change of music’s relationship to presidential campaigns due to Internet sites like YouTube, JibJab, and Facebook. Readers are ultimately treated to an entertaining account of American political development through popular music and the complex, two-way relationship between music and presidential campaigns.

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In exploring the history of presidential campaign songs, Schoening and Kasper (both, Univ. of Wisconsin, Barron County) researched a wide range of primary and secondary sources. Following the brief introduction are eight chapters divided into three parts dealing with the "traditional era," the "mass media era," and the "popular music era." The authors begin with the earliest campaigns (1789), in which music was sparse. The 1840 campaign was the first to feature music, and campaign songs proliferated through the latter half of the 19th century and into the 20th. Campaigns increasingly used commercially produced pop songs after midcentury. In discussing all this, the authors provide information on the candidates, details on changes in technology (from songbooks to the Internet), and the words to many of the songs. Though third-party presidential efforts, such as the Henry Wallace Progressive Party campaign (1948), are unfortunately overlooked, there is an interesting discussion of the role of the Internet in the 21st century. There is a very helpful, although selective, bibliography, which includes such important sources as Songs America Voted By, comp. and ed. by Irwin Silber (1971). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers

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