Dear Beyoncé and Taylor: Thanks for Staying Home. The DNC Benefited From Treating Musicians as Opening Acts, Not…see more

Dear Beyoncé and Taylor: Thanks for Staying Home. The DNC Benefited From Treating Musicians as Opening Acts, Not Headliners
The Democrats are surely counting on cashing in a rain check with those superstars… but there was a lot to be said for the more modest picks who did bolster the convention with smart musical choices, from Jason Isbell to Lil Jon to Pink.

The Democrats are surely counting on cashing in a rain check with those superstars… but there was a lot to be said for the more modest picks who did bolster the convention with smart musical choices, from Jason Isbell to Lil Jon to Pink.
Under any other circumstance, if there was a widespread rumor — supposedly verified by legit news sources — that Beyoncé was going to perform at an internationally televised event, only to have the evening proceed with no mention or trace of her, it’d feel deflating. But that airy sound you heard across the land Thursday night wasn’t the sound of a whiff… it was a mass sigh of relief. (At least that’s a sensation that I’m guessing might have been more universally shared than not.) The news journalist in me was hoping that she or Taylor Swift would make an appearance at the Democratic National Convention; the political pragmatist who feels an actual stake in this election was praying the two of them would be making it a C-SPAN-and-chill night. Part of the savvy of being a superstar is recognizing those moments when the world says it wants you but it really doesn’t, not right at this second, at least.

This Democratic National Convention was an exceptionally well-produced one, and that extends to a treatment of star entertainers that could be described as, for lack of a better term, conservative. There were big stars, but not too big — no offense to Pink, who is currently headlining stadiums, but who knows as well as any of us that her nicely placed acoustic number is not going to dominate a news cycle. (Although it was fun to speculate for a minute that Kamala Harris might make her entrance doing a trapeze act with the pop star.) The inherent dangers are in overshadowing, but also in the inevitable backlash against a surfeit of “Hollywood elites.” The approach of producers Ricky Kershner and Glenn Weiss to using entertainers, generally, as well as musicians, specifically, seemed to be: Sprinkle lightly, just for seasoning… and for just enough cachet to gently remind viewers that, sure, the vast majority of people in the arts are on your side. In a different year, they might’ve needed to load up. But as anyone this side of Scott Jennings would have to admit: In 2024, the DNC had its own surplus of rock stars, with the glory of oratory as their Spotify genre.

the deliberateness of employing several artists who either are or were part of the country music world or in associated genres. Notably, there were two acts who used to be superstars of mainstream genre who have felt pushed out because of their social and political views, the Chicks (nee: Dixie) and Maren Morris. Of course, the Chicks becoming national pariahs goes back more than 20 years now — they were the first and still all-time champions among mass cancel culture victims — while Morris’ status in country is still a bit on the bubble, since she admitted feeling alienated from the genre after tangling with Aldean’s wife in a public dispute about trans kids. The presence of these two artists neatly paralleled the frequent use of speakers throughout the convention who still identify as distressed conservatives, like former Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Stephanie Grisham, who beseeched their fellow Republicans to see that the Harris/Walz camp is the patriotic place to be.