International Law

Campaign chorus

As all readers of this blog would be aware, this is America's first YouTube election. In a piece for the Sydney Morning Herald, Dorian Lynskey counts the hits - and misses:

YouTube is the entertainment battleground for the US election. From stars to amateurs, thousands of campaigners have posted songs backing the candidates.

The site has become a vibrant new political battleground, where candidates' images are cheerfully reshaped via spoofs, sketches and songs. Ideas, not campaign dollars, are becoming the crucial currency. One major downside if you're a presidential candidate is that your every gaffe will be recorded, remixed and rewatched for months to come. One upside: you don't have to generate your own campaign songs any more.

In past decades, a US election song was the job of the candidate's team, producing such gems as Keep Cool And Keep Coolidge, Buckle Down With Nixon and Get On A Raft With Taft. But this year the official songs are largely unloved, irrelevant and unnoticed - all the important musical action is on YouTube, where self-penned ditties meet recontextualised oldies and celebrity endorsements encounter amateur spoofs.

Much of this is down to Obama, who has been granted his own jokey genre: Barack'n'roll.

Here are some of the videos that are helping define the race for who is to become Leader of the Free World.

Read more here.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on May 26, 2008 (boomark / email).