An epic presidential debate demands an epic playlist. Here’s ours.
The Philadelphia Inquirer's Opinion team avidly watched the Kamala Harris-Donald Trump presidential debate last night. Here is part of our call-and-response to it in song.
If you watched last night’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, you probably anticipated some memorable moments. But perhaps you didn’t expect to be “in conversation“ with the debate, talking back when each candidate offered up an opinion you hated, or loved.
That kind of call-and-response is a staple of music, so when The Inquirer’s Opinion team met virtually this morning, it was almost inevitable that the individual team members’ characterization of the debate would be expressed via song.
And, ultimately, a playlist (tl;dr? Scroll to the bottom).
“Welcome to the Terrordome” by Public Enemy was contributing columnist Solomon Jones’ choice.
“The handshake was Harris welcoming Trump to the Terrordome. She then administered a beatdown,” he said. “One of the lines in this song that resonates for me when it comes to Trump questioning Harris’s racial identity is ‘Never question what I am. God knows! Cause it’s coming from the heart.’”
Columnists Will Bunch and Helen Ubiñas, and editors Devi Lockwood and Luis Carrasco all selected songs that were addressed squarely at Donald Trump and his debate performance.
Bunch picked a classic direct-address song of dismissal.
Ubiñas offered three songs: Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated,” and the Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Brain.”
Lockwood, meanwhile, with her song choice gave a nod to the fact that Taylor Swift endorsed Harris shortly after the debate.
Carrasco noted that “with all of Trump’s talk of pets during the debate and his well-documented disgust for our canine pals,” this Nellie McKay song was apropos.
Others focused on Harris with their choice of songs. Editorial writer Daniel Pearson chose a Florence + the Machine song to characterize the debate, but only if the debate “leads to a Harris victory.”
For columnist Jenice Armstrong there was one song that was the most natural contender to represent the debate as a whole: the Beyoncé song that has become Harris’ walk up music.
After a debate full of fabrications and demonization of immigrants, for editor Sabrina Vourvoulias, the choice had to speak to the bitter and the sweet of America — the past that informs the present and the future — in Rihanna’s “American Oxygen.”
Finally, as the Inquirer Editorial Board noted after the debate, “for many Americans who have watched Trump with disgust and dismay as he tweeted his way into the White House and turned the United States into a laughingstock,” the evening “was 90 minutes of exhilaration.” Fittingly, opinion editor-at-large and senior editorial writer Paul Davies selected the Four Seasons’ “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night).”