For a couple of months now, I’ve been playing music inspired by Senator Barack Obama. Cocoa Tea and Mavado released reggae songs. Ludacris put out a short song called Politics (Obama is Here) which garnered a little controversy due to a less-than-polite mention of Hillary Clinton. I’ve either been closing or opening my set with one of those songs for quite a while and in the process, I’ve gotten a bit of negative feedback. One young lady in the bar booed me. Another approached me and told me that I needed to change the song because she doesn’t like Obama. I asked why not and she said, “I don’t know. He just scares me.” I asked for further explanation and realized that she’s one of the people that has fallen for the false stories about his religion, patriotism, etc. – all the things that can be refuted with a simple online search. So, I told her that I would be fair and I would play a John McCain song anytime I play an Obama song.
I told people the same thing for weeks and they typically would laugh because they didn’t think there were any McCain songs out there. I personally didn’t think that anyone would be inspired enough by the man to put pen to paper. It seems like the Republican party has party faithful and followers, but Obama seemed to be inspiring people to take action and to voice their opinions in the hope that a positive change would take effect. The small groups of people that McCain spoke to never seemed to get too fired up about him or his words.
I watched McCain’s RNC acceptance speech tonight, and heard a country song playing afterwards. As I listened closer, I realized that the singer’s lyrics were “We’re raising McCain” as in “raising cain.” I looked up the video to listen to the full song. It’s a simple song, titled “Raisin’ McCain” by John Rich. It’s a country song, which is no surprise after looking at the congregation at the Republican Convention. The song only has one real verse, with a chorus that’s repeated five times. It seems to only celebrate McCain as a POW, rather than expound on his cultural effect, as you find in Cocoa Tea’s song. Again, this is no surprise after listening to basically every speaker at the convention mention McCain’s captivity. Something that would lead to PTSD somehow also qualifies him to be President, apparently.
But, true to my word, I plugged into the mixer and started the night off with the McCain song, fed straight from the video website. It garnered some odd looks, which may have been because of its repetitious nature, or possibly because I was playing a country song on hip-hop night. It’s not a very good song in general. Cocoa Tea’s song has a catchy chorus and interesting, humorous lyrics, but the McCain song falls short of that.
I’m still waiting for a good McCain song.
