Don't Stop Thinking About the Music

Download or read book Don't Stop Thinking About the Music written by Benjamin S. Schoening and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2011-12-16 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.