Donald Trump\u2019s presence in national politics has always been predicated heavily on nostalgia. His campaign theme is \u201cMake America great again,\u201d after all, a call for voters to restore the nation to a bygone era, one unsullied by the complexities of modern life, such as diversity and cities.<\/p>\n
Some element of Trump\u2019s presentation is familiar to anyone who has a relative over the age of, say, 50: He thinks things were better when he was young, and he wants to cram America into a big time machine and have all of us travel back a few decades. This isn\u2019t feasible, obviously, so he resigns himself to overhauling the current America to look like the old one, like Jimmy Stewart getting to work in \u201cVertigo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump would appreciate that reference, because Trump\u2019s pop-culture touchstones are generally also decades-old. That was made very apparent on Monday night when, for inexplicable reasons, he converted a campaign rally in Oaks, Pa., into a sort of danceless dance party.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s make this a musical fest,\u201d he declared after multiple attendees got a bit wobbly in the overheated event space. When the first such interruption occurred, the audience began singing \u201cGod Bless America\u201d for some reason, prompting Trump to ask his audiovisual people to play \u201cAve Maria\u201d over the loudspeaker.<\/p>\n
This was the first moment where things got weird. The version of that song \u2014 according to this Washington Post columnist\u2019s deployment of Shazam on Tuesday morning \u2014 was one created by a musical artist named \u201cRachel Conwell.\u201d She has released about 100 albums in the past two years, most featuring public-domain music and AI-generated cover art. Conwell has published those songs in various languages, with albums aimed at ASMR (Google it), getting babies to sleep or having dogs chill out.<\/p>\n
I suspect Conwell might not really exist. Regardless, Trump didn\u2019t like her instrumental version, complaining that \u201cthey gave me the \u2018Ave Maria\u2019 with no voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
A bit later, once the \u201cmusical fest\u201d got underway, they played the version he liked, the one by Luciano Pavarotti recorded in the mid-1970s. Then came another operatic bop, \u201cTime to Say Goodbye\u201d by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. But why simply describe the playlist when you can actually play the playlist?<\/p>\n
What was odd about the musical fest \u2014 beyond Trump spending nearly 40 precious minutes standing on a stage listening to music instead of talking to voters \u2014 was that it was not really fun, danceable music, as such. Trump prides himself (we hear from reporting) on cobbling together playlists for the customers at his private clubs. But there\u2019s a big difference between what works for diners at Mar-a-Lago and for keeping a large crowd engaged and energized.<\/p>\n
James Brown\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s a Man\u2019s Man\u2019s Man\u2019s World\u201d is an energetic (if problematic) track, as was his old favorite, \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d by the Village People. (Here, too, the subtext might not entirely align with Trump\u2019s politics, but I digress.) But then came Rufus Wainwright\u2019s beautiful, melancholic \u201cHallelujah\u201d \u2014 made famous by its incongruous appearance in the animated film \u201cShrek\u201d \u2014 and then Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor\u2019s similarly heartfelt \u201cNothing Compares 2 U.\u201d (Trump is perhaps hoping his Catholic supporters forget the controversy that once swirled around her.)<\/p>\n
Then came a song that I am surprised has not been mentioned more in coverage of the event: \u201cDixie,\u201d as sung by Elvis Presley. Yes, it was part of the hip-swinging singer\u2019s cover of \u201cAmerican Trilogy,\u201d a three-song medley. But it was still \u201cDixie,\u201d the unofficial anthem of the Confederacy! Played at a presidential campaign event in the year 2024! Without anyone commenting on it!<\/p>\n
By this point in the show (such as it was), the crowd was restless. Trump had at one point even wondered into the microphone why no one was leaving, as though his understanding of \u201cmusical fests\u201d was that people left as the music was playing. He finally stepped offstage as \u201cMemory,\u201d from the 1983 Broadway cast recording of songs from \u201cCats,\u201d was playing over the loudspeaker.<\/p>\n
You have perhaps noticed that these songs are mostly old. Wainwright\u2019s \u201cHallelujah\u201d was one of two released this century. The other, which came on right after the Elvis-\u201cDixie\u201d medley, was \u201cRich Men North of Richmond,\u201d a song by singer-songwriter Oliver Anthony that was quickly looped into the partisan culture wars last year. Every other song was released before 2001.<\/p>\n
On average, the songs came out 36 years ago, just after the median American was born. On average, they came out when Trump was about 40. Take out Wainwright and Oliver\u2019s tracks, and they came out when Trump was about 34, which sounds about right.<\/p>\n
It appears that someone on Trump\u2019s team attempted at some point to redirect his attention to the ostensible reason he was at that venue in Pennsylvania: to campaign. The Post\u2019s Jabin Botsford captured an image of the teleprompter urging Trump to get back to taking questions.<\/p>\n
But Trump didn\u2019t. He has a room full of people who had invested time and\/or money to be near him, and, as he does at Mar-a-Lago, he took advantage of the opportunity to play some of his favorite music for them. What were they going to do, not vote for him?<\/p>\n
What his campaign team realized, even if he didn\u2019t, was that the point of the event was also the people not in the room, some of whom might have wanted to know more about Trump than what his musical influences were.<\/p>\n
Too bad for them.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump\u2019s presence in national politics has always been predicated heavily on nostalgia. His campaign theme is \u201cMake America great again,\u201d after all, a call for voters to restore the nation to a bygone era, one unsullied by the complexities of modern life, such as diversity and cities. Some element of Trump\u2019s presentation is familiar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11092,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}