Anyone who has written about or engaged with pop culture should be tired of hearing that the landscape should be politicised. The refrain that “all art is political” hides a deep dishonesty that misleads its followers. While art can be used for expressing political thought, what the slogan usually expresses is that it ought to be political — and not just political but partisan and progressive. 

Music has always played a big role in political campaigns. Progressives rely on brash and current pop stars to make their candidates look cool and confident, while conservatives use older music artists either to harken back to the lost years or to troll their opponents. While Kamala Harris was honoured as “brat” by Charli XCX (which she defines as someone who “messy, volatile, parties a lot and does dumb things”) and Megan Thee Stallion performed in her first campaign rally, the Republican National Convention invited Kid Rock.

Leftists, and left-leaning musicians especially, have always struggled to understand why their political adversaries would use their music for means outside of what they intended. Young Germans who opposed mass immigration used “L’Amour Toujours” by the Italian DJ Gigi D’Agostino singing “Ausländer raus, Ausländer raus, Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer raus”, which means foreigners out, Germany for Germans. Of course, once this was co-opted by the AfD, the media took immediate notice, wondering why an innocuous song was used for hate. Later, Oktoberfest organisers plan on banning anyone who uses it for “racist attacks”.

Right-wing politicians using popular music often arouses bitterness. Upon hearing a cover of “Reeling in the Years” at the RNC, Steely Dan’s frontman Donald Fagen took offence by posting a meme on Facebook asking the house band Sixwire to perform the anti-Trump “Tinfoil Hat”. As soon as JD Vance was announced as the Republican vice-presidential candidate, political operatives dug up his Spotify playlists, which includes Death Cab for Cutie, One Direction and The Black Keys. Say whatever you will about JD Vance’s politics or his personality, but his curation of random songs before his fame as a bestselling author and National Conservative mascot has been the least interesting criticism of him. Death Cab for Cutie’s frontman Chris Walla wrote that the songs “centre on connection, and longing, and the fear or pain of loss”, but was baffled by why Vance “can’t – or wouldn’t – work to pay that empathy forward in policy terms, openly, to every person, as the artists do in song.”

There is a thick layer of sanctimony coming from these responses. As soon as artists find that their music is used by other people, they ridicule one half of the population.

The inherent qualities of music can withstand polarisation. Recent research has found that taste in music does intensify an emotional response upon the listener — emboldening their identity and strengthening their relationship with the art and its history. But they have also shown that preferences in genres like classic rock, pop and country have little connection to investment in political causes.

The sensation of listening remains pure, and the direct political use is complex. Did Rage Against the Machine, a rap-rock group which is far left on countless issues, expect that their songs would be used in Republican rallies? How is Bruce Springsteen being dismayed that people interpret “Born in the USA” as a patriotic anthem, rather than a scathing critique of America? No matter what the answer to these questions, the artist couldn’t prevent other layers of meanings being heard in their work once they became ubiquitous.  

The most recent example of this paradox is MGMT’s “Little Dark Age”. The indie pop outfit, known for being the college dorm soundtrack in the 2000s with “Time to Pretend” and “Kids”, reemerged a decade later with this gothic track. It has been utilised by countless social media edits and remixes, centering the song around a variety of topics from film, anime, to fashion. Like clockwork, the conservative use of the meme has been singled out, with the artists and their champions taking turns in deriding anyone who missed the point of the song. MGMT took a swipe at a campaign edit that was posted on Rishi Sunak’s X account that promoted Britain’s defence forces (it was removed days later). The Guardian’s music critic Alexis Petridis took aim at “neo-Nazis” for not understanding their lyrics saying that “they are, fairly obviously, an excoriation of Trump-era America and racist police violence.”

As Michael Jordan once said “Republicans buy sneakers too”. They also listen to their favourite music

The Tories’s usage of the song was misguided, only highlighting their woeful years in power and their empty promises. Still, no one else has been stopped from doing their little edits, because the theme and atmosphere of brokenness and disconnection in the songs resonates with so many different listeners. It’s an anthem for the disenfranchised and the pessimistic, wherever their pessimism, and regardless of how “media literate” they are, they express these emotional reactions as with any other song.  

In fact, banging on about the song’s original meaning is an example of politicising the art, with little awareness that the song’s greater aspects transcend any monomaniacal purpose to limit spontaneous expression. However right-wingers interpret the song, it did not kill the author, it expanded its possibilities.

As Michael Jordan once said “Republicans buy sneakers too”. They also listen to their favourite music.