I’m working on a think piece for the station about the surge of protest songs from folk and roots singers in these recent weeks, as the 2020 election finally becomes a reality. More than ever, artists are calling out and venting at President Trump explicitly or by association, as with the brilliant “American Stooge” by Mary Chapin Carpenter, who writes about one of the sycophantic enablers, inspired by Sen. Lindsay Graham.
I wasn’t looking for pop songs, but I wasn’t not looking either. And today I see that Demi Lovato has released “Commander In Chief,” apparently in coordination with the Never-Trumper media and advocacy group The Lincoln Project. So I first saw the second of the two videos below, not knowing what to expect, but intrigued to see the Lincoln Project putting out a three-minute video with a song by a major pop star. It was a bigger deal than I imagined. It was a little before lunch. I was in manic multi-media mode, writing and surfing, but as this song unfolded, it did exactly what pop music is supposed to do, which was to unlock a door to my real feelings, the ones under the trap door under the carpet, the ones so easily deferred through distraction and irony. By minute two I was crying, with my body, for my country and the victims of this abhorrent and unworthy man. Lovato draws this direct, blazing line between the pain of the people and the top of the power structure. She saddles him with his responsibility, his constitutional duty and his abject failure to execute. No wonder traditional Republicans resonate with what she’s singing.
We're in a state of crisis, people are dyin'
While you line your pockets deep
Commander in Chief, how does it feel to still
Be able to breathe?
We have more modest musical expectations of folk singers, concentrating on the message. And pop singers with world-class voices and retinues of producers and arrangers so often have so much invested in maxing out their audience that they don’t step off the ledge and get beyond easy consensus points of view. This, achieving both, is a work of courage and conviction and musical alchemy. Hours later, when I listened a third time, focusing on the formal video this time, with its cast of diverse Americans staring daggers and syncing the lyrics, it brought me to tears again. And again, I felt better for it. I can get hung up on the intellectual side of music, where I live quite comfortably. I don’t very often ask for music to strip away my defensiveness, even as I’m aware of how big a part of music that is for others. Mixing topical song and massive emotional impact is frightfully hard. There’s not a “What’s Going On?” to meet every social crisis, but this song I think earns a place like that in the history books, when a message and a melody met moment.
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