Don't Stop Thinking About the Music

Music has prehistoric roots and has throughout history been shown to have a significant effect on humankind. Under this premise, our book explains how music has been used in American presidential campaigns during the country's history. We describe the ways that song use has evolved over the last two centuries, including how initial campaign songs took existing music and added new lyrics, how music became more and more intertwined with the campaigns and their messages in the nineteenth century, how campaign songs are now largely taken from existing popular music tunes, and how the Internet is quickly changing music's relationship to presidential campaigns. Ours is ultimately a book about the use of music and American political development, as it describes how political transformations such as America's changing party structure and technological advancements like radio have affected music's use in presidential campaigns.