What with all the controversy over certain campaigns using certain songs this season, it was enlightening to read Hillary Clinton adviser/music blogger Howard Wolfson’s discussion of how the Clinton campaign went about branding itself musically earlier this year, a decision that was quite fraught because of her Senatorial run’s use of Billy Joel’s “Captain Jack.” (Seriously! “Captain Jack”! Was Hillary running on a “getting the people of New York high tonight” platform in 1999?) Wolfson ran down a few potential theme songs that were shot down for various reasons by Clinton insiders in today’s New York Times:
KT Tunstall, “Suddenly I See”
“What about the singer’s use of the word ‘hell’?”
Four Tops, “Get Ready”
“Too sexual.” (Also, um, too “by the Temptations,” no?)
Janet Jackson, “Rhythm Nation”
“What about that unfortunate wardrobe malfunction?”
And so on. (Is Janet Jackson having the worst year or what?) So then the campaign decided: Why not put it to the people? And the people picked a song that Celine Dion had sung in honor of Air Canada, which Wolfson–and this site!–jokingly, and correctly, cited as the beginning of the end of her campaign. Oh, Hillary, if you’d only looked past that exposed nipple for the sake of turning America into a true Rhythm Nation!
I can’t lie, I was originally a Hillary supporter in the early days of ‘07, and found myself drifting over to Barack over the course of that year. If she’d gone with “Rhythm Nation,” she might have kept me. WHAT A SONG.
She should have stuck with the Sopranos finale reset in full, and gone with “Don’t Stop Believing.”
The best part of “Rhythm Nation” viz. Hillary’s campaign would have been its second, coded message, found in its sample: Sly Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).”
Indeed! Hill, girl, when in doubt, just be yourself.
P.S. Even Wolfson gets this wrong: Hillary never intentionally used “Captain Jack” to be her warmup song.
This might sound apocryphal, but I saw it on a TV bio one time and I believe it: according to a campaign aide who was manning the boards at the ill-fated ‘99 rally for her Senate campaign, the intention was to cue up Joel’s “New York State of Mind” (think of it — she’d just moved to New York back then, was fighting accusations of carpetbagging, etc.), and accidentally the Greatest Hits disc fired up “Jack” instead. It was a regrettable accident.
@Chris Molanphy: I can believe that.
@Chris Molanphy: That’s amazing if true, because I remember what a media firestorm that issue created. I bet Rush Limbaugh got two shows of material out of that … all over an intern hitting the track skip button one too many times.