How Many Songs Do We Need to Explain Politics? with Rob Harvilla
TOPICS DISCUSSED
Heat, Water, and Development Choices
Rob Harvilla on Presidential Campaign Songs
Outside of Politics: Making Friends as Adults
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EPISODE RESOURCES
Pantsuit Politics episodes on gun violence and reform (Spotify)
60 Songs That Explain the '90s (The Ringer)
Steyer Dances To Back That Thang Up Before S.C. Primary | MSNBC (YouTube)
DNC 1996 - Macarena Extended (YouTube)
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.
Beth [00:00:26] Thank you for joining us for a new episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, we're going to talk about extreme weather across the United States. It's hot. And the air is gross. And I know many of you are experiencing that. And after that, I'm going to share a delight of a conversation that I had with Rob Harvilla, host of 60 Songs that Explain the Nineties. And Outside of Politics, we're going to talk about making friends as adults. For the extreme heat and making friends conversations, I have brought in an expert on both topics. I was trying to decide how to introduce you, Brian. Should I introduce you as a United Nations Award winner for your innovation and disabilities work, or as someone so dear to me that you're my emergency contact? I assume those two compete for the top slot on your resume.
Brian Hart [00:01:09] They're up there. I prefer the second one, because someone's emergency contact is a high value mark for me, so I'll take it.
Beth [00:01:17] Well, Brian Hart is here, and I am so glad that you're with me, Brian. Brian's been on the show before. Moved to Kentucky from Utah, which I'm sure is going to come up in our next conversation. We're going to talk about the Supreme Court on Tuesday. I promise. There's a lot to process from this term; we will get into it. We will also continue to talk about gun violence. Always on the show. It's been a tragic week across the country. We are grieving it. I know you are, too. Maggie recently compiled a list of all of our episodes about gun violence that we'll link in the notes. It is sadly long and sadly incomplete. But if you're new here, I hope that list will lead you to some conversations that might help you process the shootings that took place this week. But for right now, it is Friday. It's a holiday week. I hope wherever you are, you were able to get outside. But outside has been a little tricky. Brian, have you noticed the air quality issues we've been experiencing here in northern Kentucky?
Brian Hart [00:02:16] Yeah, it's ridiculous. And moving here from Utah about four years ago, we had assumed that we had left all of the West Coast air horrible stuff back there and now it has found its way out to us. I was in Iowa for work last week and noticed the air was bad flying into town. I noticed it was bad sitting outside. All week it was bad. I noticed it with my kids with asthma. It was bad. It's bad.
Beth [00:02:41] How did our bad in Kentucky compare to the bad that you were used to out West? Because I have to tell you, I feel like this opened my eyes. I don't know that I've ever noticed air quality before, and I didn't think about the extreme privilege and benefit that confers on me until here it was like palpably in our faces.
Brian Hart [00:03:00] This wasn't as bad as some of the things that we would see. So where we lived in Utah, it was a valley surrounded by mountains on all sides. And so the pollution gets trapped. They call it an inversion. Everything gets stuck in the valley. So the only thing that can get rid of it is major storms. And when you live in a desert, there are very few major storms. So it just sucks and sucks and sucks in. And we've seen it where here in Kentucky I'm always amused that our kids can't go outside when it's below 32 to play. Like they don't have coats and gloves, whatever. There's privilege in owning coats and gloves. I get that too.
Beth [00:03:34] We're soft here. We're a little spoiled. I think that's what it is.
Brian Hart [00:03:38] Yeah. But our kids in Utah wouldn't go outside to play at resorts because of air quality. And there were a number of them where they couldn't even go outside. We would go up to the mountains on the weekends to try to get away from it and you would see it coming down the valley. It just looked like a layer of haze that you would punch through to drive back into the valley. I don't think we're to that level here because this feels very much temporary to me. I think I can see the hope in it. Yesterday did not seem nearly as bad. It seemed like it started to blow away. But it was it was reminders of what it was. We have one son who for some reason has to use an inhaler here and there. And he's definitely been using it more, which was what it was like when we lived in Utah as well.
Beth [00:04:19] Yeah, I've tried to watch the map since the couple of days where I felt like you just couldn't ignore it here. And it's just been an awakening for me to see how many people are experiencing this so frequently to a much more extreme degree than what we get here in Kentucky. I could feel it in my lungs for about two days. One of our neighbors who runs was telling me that in the morning his runs have become almost impossible. And I am glad that we're getting some relief. But I'm thinking a lot about I how can I, Beth Silvers, pay better attention to this issue across the country?
Brian Hart [00:04:52] Well, I think too it's getting better for us now; though, the way things are going, how long until this is more prevalent? We have the bad air quality here for very specific reasons, and it's because of wildfires up in Canada. So how often is that going to happen again, that this is what we see more and more each summer?
Beth [00:05:11] Absolutely. I was reading this morning about how Monday, July 3rd, is informally being designated the hottest day we've ever had. Now, I guess we're waiting on a more prominent agency to tell us about their data that goes back to 1880. But preliminarily, it was really hot in the world on Monday, 62.62 degrees Fahrenheit. And that's the average global temperature. So that's like counting Antarctica. It is hot everywhere right now compared to the levels that we're used to and that Earth likes to be.
Brian Hart [00:05:43] Yeah, it's so hot. And Jen's parent, my wife's family, they live in Arizona and they always joke-- I think I made this joke yesterday that anything above 110, you don't really notice anymore. But we were looking at how often their days are above 110. It's ridiculous. We don't visit Arizona in the summer any longer. There's nothing that's going to get me out there. We went once for a wedding. If anyone in our family gets married in the summer again, they're going to miss The Harts at their wedding because it's just too hot. And you can see it feels like where we are, it hasn't been as hot, so I've been kind of numb to it. And then when it does get hot, I'm like, oh, that's right. It does get really, really hot sometimes.
Beth [00:06:21] And we forget that hot doesn't just mean discomfort. I mean, a bunch of cities around the world are hiring Chief Heat Officers because of how devastating it is for a city's infrastructure. And unhoused populations, heat is really deadly for people across the world. It's deadly for plants and animals too. We have broken a ton of climate records in 2023 and the oceans especially are hot. And now we have the first El Nino in seven years that is going to make the oceans even hotter. So we could break all kinds of heat records going into 2024.
Brian Hart [00:06:52] Yeah. And anyone that's had the pleasure of sitting with me long enough knows that I get passionate about a few things, and water scarcity is one of them. And the more things are hot, the more it means less water is on the ground because it's going to evaporate off and it causes so many other issues of oceans warming up, lakes warming up, rivers eroding up. I live near a lake in Utah that we used to water ski on and swim in, but it got so hot during the summer that the algae just took over. They couldn't manage it, couldn't control it. And they said, look, this is now an unswimable lake. You can't bring your dog here. Your kids can't swim here. Don't eat the fish that comes out of this lake. It's pretty. It's big. But don't come here.
Beth [00:07:27] I would love for you to talk a little bit, Brian, about the difference between living in Utah and Kentucky because of your focus on water. Like, how do you notice that showing up in just the way you normally live your life?
Brian Hart [00:07:38] Yeah. So there are a lot of things that we don't store nearly as much water in Kentucky as we stored in Utah. We used to store a lot of water because we never knew when it was going to go away. We don't have to water our lawn. I did water my grass. I felt very guilty about it, but the grass was like starting to die. The ground was getting so broken and dead that it needed a little bit of water in a dry spell. But we used to run sprinklers every single day in the neighborhood, and it would drive me nuts. So I would stop watering our lawn. I would let it die. We were the brown street in the neighborhood. And now that we live here, I think about it less because water is so prevalent and I'm really grateful for it. The fact that we have lakes and rivers that are so close, but I still think about it's in the back of my mind all the time that we don't have 50 gallon barrels of water in my basement just in case. When we moved from one house, three doors down, we did not bring all of our water storage with us. We brought a lot of it, but there were some we got rid of. But I've noticed that when when I look around, everything's so green. It's different to think of it in an artificial way, like it was in Utah, where you had to pump all this money in to keeping it going. Here it just happens and we take it for granted more and more. But I also, even though it's here, we still do things like we don't water our plants as often. We still water them when they need it. We got to pay attention to when the plants need to be watered and water them then. You don't have to set a scheduled for it. We don't have to set up things for that. But that's really the big thing. It's just noticing that we become immune to the idea when he lived out west that if it's summertime so you have a green lawn. And if that means that you destroy all your water source as well, now you have a green lawn. Like every church, every school has this beautiful green lawn and there's no water. So it would drive me nuts and I become a little more numb to it. Now I just focus on how do we ensure that we're not living in places that maybe we're not supposed to live in. Maybe we're not overpopulating areas. Part of when we were looking to move out of Utah, we purposely only looked for places that were not overpopulated and straining resources, which is where Kentucky is. We really loved where we live. I'm always shocked, though, when I dig a hole to do anything and then water just flows out of the ground rather than having to pump it out of a pump in my basement. I'm not used to that yet even four years later.
Beth [00:09:50] Yeah. I think most people don't realize how much water is in Kentucky, how how many lakes and rivers. They're just everywhere, all over the state. It makes total sense to me, if you are a person who's thinking a lot about air quality and water and climate in general to make a move from Utah to Kentucky. I am surprised by how many people are moving to the South and Southwest right now. That with everything we know about climate shifting, we are seeing our economy shift in really measurable ways to Texas, Georgia-- everything seems to be coming south and southwest. And I wonder since you have been in Utah and kind of in the West where a lot of those folks are coming from, what you think is going on there?
Brian Hart [00:10:32] And I asked this question when I was in Phoenix over Easter, visiting with my my in-laws. I asked my father and I said, "What do people do here? Why are they building?" They had a piece of land next to their house that was vacant and dirt because it's the desert, there's nothing there. We left for a year, came back the next Easter, and there were probably 200 homes. Homes that were so close if you reached out your window, you would touch the home next to you. And if you had really long arms, you could touch almost both sides. It was really insane. And I asked how do people afford this? The cost of living is really high now. There's not a lot of water. There's nothing to do. And it's this idea that there used to be really low cost of living there. So it's very cheap to have a big family there to live there. I think culturally a lot of people out west have a bigger families and so you can have more space, but it's shifted and it's not that way anymore. There are still a lot of businesses that are moving there for some reason. I don't understand that either, because probably there are population centers. But what we are seeing too in those states is people are moving out of areas like California, out of areas like Nevada, to places like Arizona, Utah. Because even though if you are moving there from Kentucky, you would be shocked at how expensive it is. If your moving there from California or Washington or Oregon, it's very cheap. So you can move there. You're still kind of close to the coast. You're within 10 hours of the ocean, that kind of stuff. I think that plays a big part, but there are still a lot of businesses that went there because it was cheap. The labor force was cheap. You could hire people at minimum wage, $7.25 an hour to do a lot of jobs. So you built your company there and then it just stayed. I did see and I'll be interested to see how this holds up that their governor in Arizona did put a moratorium on new builds because of the lack of water shortage. And I thought that is a great headline. And so I have to read more into it. I do a little bit of housing development for the nonprofit that I run, but we don't do a large scale. And I thought even at my scale, I can get around this very easily. I can make up some hundred year water plan that nobody's going to fact check or check me on and start building houses again. And so I think there's a move in the right direction, but something has to change.
Beth [00:12:33] It's so tricky because in a lot of those population centers where resources are strained, you also see significant housing shortage. That's why it's so expensive. That's why there are these enormous homeless populations. And I don't know how we balance this interest without trying to relocate people and relocating people away from families, businesses, cultures that they've known their entire lives is less simple than it sounds. I think all the time about how we are on the whole, not a densely populated country, but we have not spread ourselves very efficiently across this land that we have available to us. So I think that the challenges here are just going to continue to compound. And I am really grateful for Kentucky. I've never been as grateful for Kentucky as I am today.
Brian Hart [00:13:15] Oh my gosh, all the time. I think about it all the time. Never in a million years on a map would have I said I'm going to move to Kentucky. And I can't imagine living anywhere else. And it was a hard move for us, and we had to purposely decide we're going to move away from everything we know because there are better things out there for us.
Beth [00:13:31] So we're going to talk a lot more about that in just a few minutes. But first, Rob Harvilla is here. And I know you're as excited about this as I am, Brian, and I appreciate that.
Brian Hart [00:13:40] I am very excited. I have two things that I listen to pretty much all the time. Podcasts-- and a lot of them, and nineties music, nineties playlist. There's nothing before 1990 and there's almost nothing after 99. And so when I learned that this podcast existed, I jumped into it and I told literally everyone I know about it.
Beth [00:13:58] Yes. One of my favorite things is to process episodes of 60 Songs with you and your wife, Jen, and my husband Chad. So without further ado, Rob Harvilla is a senior staff writer at the Ringer, where he hosts 60 Songs that Explain the Nineties. My favorite podcast. My husband's favorite podcast, besides Pantsuit Politics, of course. With campaign season upon us, I ask Rob to talk with me about music that's been used in presidential campaigns in the recent past. I wanted to have Rob on the show because I know many of you share my love of music because he so beautifully and seamlessly addresses the political dimensions of music in his work and because he's just really good at his job. Rob is funny without being mean. He's fair in his criticism, while remembering that people made what he's critiquing and that it brings joy to someone out there. He is nostalgic without holding up the past as something it never was. He's curious and smart and so excellent at podcasting that he makes me want to be better at my job. I'm thrilled that he said yes to my random Twitter DM inviting him to be on the show. So here is Rob Harvilla. Rob Harvilla, I'm so excited to talk to you. My husband told me to tell you that as a suburban dad of a certain age, he is your biggest fan and he really wanted to be on this call with us but felt he wouldn't add a lot. But we are huge fans of 60 Songs that Explain the Nineties, America's favorite poorly named podcast. And I have already preordered your forthcoming book Songs that Explain the Nineties. So glad to have you here.
Rob Harvilla [00:15:29] That's tremendously kind of you to say. We can hang out with your husband at another time. I'm sure you will have lots to add. That's very kind of you. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. I'm honored.
Beth [00:15:39] I love what you do on the show, and I especially love when there's a political reference. I laughed until I cried about Tom Steyer. So I would love for you, if you don't mind to tell a little of that story to our audience if they've not heard it before as an entry point for this conversation.
Rob Harvilla [00:15:55] Yes, poor Tom Steyer. I do believe Tom Steyer was not a successful presidential candidate. I'm going to defer to you on this and all other political takes, but that was my sense of things. He was looking for some juice. I believe you is at a historically black college, which is a very unfortunate part of the story, but he gets Juvenile up on stage. Juvenile, the famous rapper from New Orleans, universally beloved. And Juvenile sings Back That Ass Up, Juvenile's I think signature song. It's I guess technically Back That Thing Up. He played the radio friendly, the political candidate friendly version. I think there was sort of a mixture of obscenity and not obscenity, but it's just Tom Steyer dead sing to Back That Thing Up on stage in I believe South Carolina. And this goes viral but like bad viral, I think you would say. I don't think this was successful as a stunt, as a way of conferring grace onto him. I don't know if it quite worked. I myself can't deal with cringe in very large quantities, and so I watched like 10 to 15 to 20 seconds of it. I just can't. It's like looking at an eclipse, you're supposed to look through the cardboard box or whatever. I cannot directly watch Tom Steyer dance to Back That Ass Up. It's not in my Constitution. It was a rough moment for everybody, I think. But I'm guessing Juvenile got a paycheck out of it one way or the other. And I do support that aspect, if only that.
Beth [00:17:46] Tremendously difficult for the self-funding candidates to find music that is the right vibe, I think, for their campaign. Just a tough lift.
Rob Harvilla [00:17:56] Yes. That was not the move. I can understand, unfortunately, in a very sort of cynical way why Tom Steyer believed that to be the move. Like, I could really picture that meeting, that group meeting. It's like, "Who shall we get? Oh, I know." I know how that happens. And I can see that being an episode of Veep or something. Like, it's just it's just parody. It's self-parody in a very unpleasant and cringey and hard for me to deal with way.
Beth [00:18:29] I think a lot about who wasn't at the meeting when those types of decisions were made. When the New York Times recently did this live camera at the border. I thought, 'Who wasn't at that meeting? Someone important missed that one who could have prevented this.'
Rob Harvilla [00:18:43] I think you've got it exactly right. I think that's the heart of what's so cringey about it.
Beth [00:18:49] Well, when I heard you talking about Tom and Juvenile, I thought I really would love to talk with Rob about music and presidential campaigns, especially as we're entering what I think is likely to be, unfortunately, a cringey presidential campaign season.
Rob Harvilla [00:19:03] Yes, absolutely.
Beth [00:19:05] And so maybe drawing on some history first, to go back to, as you put it, the Fleetwood Mac of it all of the nineties. I would love to hear your thoughts about what happened with Bill Clinton and Don't Stop.
Rob Harvilla [00:19:18] When I think about the nineties and music and politics colliding I think of two things. And Fleetwood Mac is number one. I think about Bill Clinton using Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow in 1992 and then I think about the Macarena. And I don't want it. That would be another I can watch this for 15 seconds cringey moment. That was '96. That's the '96 Democratic National Convention. They're all doing them. It's just unpleasant to behold, these people doing the Macarena. And, of course, in retrospect, it has like doing the Macarena as Rome burns sort of aspect to it. Don't Stop is interesting to me because when I think about politics and music and politicians seizing upon pop songs, first I go to Born In The USA. In 1984, this is a Bruce Springsteen song. I don't know if it's antiwar, but it's a sad song from the perspective of a Vietnam veteran who's been abandoned by his country, and abandoned by the politicians in his country. It's a protest song, and yet it is seized upon almost immediately and almost in perpetuity by politicians to walk on to because this got born in the USA; it's got that keyboard riff; this is the perfect song. And just the total dissonance of that and just Bruce Springsteen having to say over and over and over again, like, stop it. Don't do that. That's where it starts for me. And so, Clinton taking Fleetwood Mac, I was reading back on it and I think the people in the room were advising him against that. You think of Clinton, he's playing saxophone on Arsenio Hall. He's trying to appeal to the youth. And his handlers are telling him that Fleetwood Mac is not how you appeal to the youth. It's weird to think of it now, but it was not a safe choice. But he is targeting people of his own generation.
[00:21:40] I was a teenager at the time, and I'm almost embarrassed to say that my entire conception of politics as a teenager was through MTV. When I think about it, I think about Rock the Vote. I think about Voter or Die. I think about all the MTV News specials. I turned 18 in '96. I got to first vote in '96. And I just I think about the ways Bill Clinton tried explicitly to appeal to me and the ways that he didn't. And Fleetwood Mac, which is honest to God, a very effective campaign song in terms of just the hook, in terms of the message, in terms of the optimism, which I think is a very hard thing to get right like that. The Born In The USA style dissonance is so present and so many pop songs that appear to be upbeat. And obviously Fleetwood Mac's got billions of pounds of cocaine and enmity backing it. But you can still hear Don't Stop as this carefree uplifting pop song or at least Clinton could make it so. it was very effective as a pop song, but it wasn't pandering to me the way him on Arsenio Hall was, the way him on MTV was. It's interesting to me. Try to chart that on like this cynicism index that Tom Steyer is at the far end of. You know what I'm saying?
Beth [00:23:06] I do.
Rob Harvilla [00:23:06] It was a good choice and it was a choice that was true to him and true to his generation. And I'm interested to know if teenagers got it or cared or it influenced them at all. I would definitely trust you over me and being able to assess what it was about that song that makes it so resonant as his campaign song, even today.
Beth [00:23:30] Well, I think that it definitely carried the boomer flag for him, and that was maybe the intention more than anything. Maybe he was going to get the teenagers because they weren't going with Bush. That's true. Anyway, so the appeal was supposed to be to a different demographic. It was funny as I was trying to read about this, I had a very classic Clinton kind of experience. I read in one place that he actually wanted to use an Elvis Presley song, and they were giving him a thumbs down to every choice he came up with because they were all so romantic and just the lyrics didn't work at all. The mood wasn't right for a campaign event. Then I read elsewhere from Paul Begala, long time Democratic strategist, big Clinton fan, that a volunteer was driving Bill and this song comes on the radio and the volunteer says, "Boy, that'd be a great campaign song for you." And Bill says, "You're right." And I thought, 'I don't believe that at all. But that sounds like classic Clinton laws to me.'
Rob Harvilla [00:24:23] I agree completely with both sides of that. Now I'm trying to figure out the Elvis song. That doesn't work. I can't come up with like-- Suspicious Minds, like, yeah, no. Elvis does not work for him. That's very funny. That's a fun counterfactual. But I had read the story somebody suggested it to him and it was such a good idea. No, I don't believe that either. But I believe that he wants me to believe it. That's how politics works from my perspective.
Beth [00:24:50] That's the perfect Bill Clinton framing for why they used that song. It was interesting to me, though, that this is one of the few times when you see a song used in a presidential campaign where the artist supports it. Juvenile aside with Tom Meyer, I wonder what you think about what it meant for Fleetwood Mac, for Clinton to kind of resurrect this song.
Rob Harvilla [00:25:11] That's what I was trying to figure out. I was trying to work myself back into my teenage brain. What did I think of Fleetwood Mac to the extent I thought of them at all? Like from a critical perspective, I don't know if you're a fan, it's the dance. It's the live album in 1997 where they do Silver Spring and it's incredible. From a critical perspective, I feel like that's where Fleetwood Mac-- I think were always respected, but that's the point where a lot of people are like, "These guys are actually cool and these songs are actually great" to the extent you can say they had like a renaissance where they were reassessed for a new generation. That's when that happened. It's that live album. I don't know that-- it's 1992, I am 14 years old. I don't think I think about Fleetwood Mac enough to think that they're cool or they're uncool. Just subconsciously, thanks to the radio or whatever, I know 15 to 20 songs. I know all of Rumors whether I want to or not. I think it just works. It's enough that it's like a song I recognize. And, again, a song that has like a both a superficial and like an actual uplift to it where I'm like, fine, that makes sense as a song to associate with him. I'm trying to think of what it would have looked like if he had tried to pander to teenagers. What's the 1992 alternative rock song that Bill Clinton would try? Like Pearl Jam's Alive or something. None of the things that I'm thinking are very appealing to me. I think you're absolutely right that what he needed was the boomer vote, support. And there's nobody you're going to get that from better than you're going to get it from Fleetwood Mac.
Beth [00:27:41] Are the 90 years more than other decades? Maybe not, but I was just thinking if he got the teenagers in the nineties, he would have lost the parents. It seems like most of the music of the nineties was really about that divide. You're not going to go Celine Dion or Metallica. So what do you do?
Rob Harvilla [00:27:59] Oh my God, Metallica would be fine. Nothing else matters as a kid, and it's like, there we go. I don't recall as a teenager thinking-- maybe it's just my humble Catholic Midwestern upbringing. But I didn't feel like my generation was at odds with my parents generation or, like, things that they liked I had to hate and vice versa. But that's an interesting idea. And I suppose it is true broadly that you have to pick one or the other. And maybe one of the appeals of Don't Stop is like it's appealing directly to the adults in the room, but it's inoffensive to the teenagers versus like Elvis, for example. I think anything older than Fleetwood Mac would have been like, oh, he's old. But it's 1977, right? Like, it's Fleetwood Mac is classic rock already at that point in the mid nineties. But it's not ancient. It doesn't feel like ancient history, like Frank Sinatra or something. Like its present tense enough that he doesn't seem old fashioned. You know what I mean?
Beth [00:29:07] Yes. And that's why I think what Bob Dole did in the nineties was really interesting because the trend for presidential campaigns going back into the 1800s was to have a song actually written for the campaign. And so, Dole wanted to both do that and seem a little younger and hipper. And then he begins his journey. So I would love to hear your thoughts on I'm a Dole Man.
Rob Harvilla [00:29:30] I totally forgot about this until you guys pointed it out to me. And that's that's the funniest thing in the world to me. I had blocked this out entirely and I go to look it up, and the first thing I find, as you say, is the publishers of Soul Man being like, "Stop it. Pay us for everything you've done so far and don't do this anymore." It's so funny to me, and I don't want to overgeneralize, but it does seem to be overwhelmingly on the Republican side. So often, the song they pick, the artist immediately is like, stop it. This has happened to Tom Petty repeatedly. I believe it happened to Heart. Like Sarah Palin did Barracuda right? And Heart were like, no. Again, Born In The USA in perpetuity is always being seized like this-- I just the other thing that made Fleetwood Mac so great is they were into it. They would appear on stage with Clinton. That's even harder than finding a pop song of any age that appeals to the voters. It's finding a pop song where the artists are going to deal with you at all. You're probably better off being a Democrat in that position just based on the politics usually of '60/70 rockers. But it's so hard to find a song where the artist will be willing to go on stage with you without, again in Juvenile's case, like presumably quite a big check. It was just the perfect storm and it never really to my mind has happened again in my lifetime where it's been a campaign song that everyone could agree on, that everyone was cool with, that the artist was cool with. It stood the test of time far beyond whatever extent you think Bill Clinton has stood the test of time.
Beth [00:31:19] It's unreal to me that he got them to play together after they had stopped playing together at his inauguration. And then I found, as I was researching this, two letters that he sent them. One to thank them for playing the inauguration and the other to thank them for five gold record copies. And both of those letters were so depressingly generic to me. ChatGPT could have written. Just really meant a lot to me. And I felt really sad about that because this was-- with the notable exception of Lee Greenwood, this was a very big deal.
Rob Harvilla [00:31:53] It was. Absolutely. It was. It's funny that you could-- I don't know if he actually did this, but I got Fleetwood Mac back together. Like that is a very strong political. Like send me to the Middle East. If I can solve Fleetwood Mac, I can solve anything. That's a strong message. That's legit.
Beth [00:32:11] Also, what else do people want? That's a successful first term, maybe. Maybe we're done here.
Rob Harvilla [00:32:16] The first 100 days get Fleetwood Mac together. That's it. That's all I'm doing. It's all I'm concentrating on, and I did it. Promises made. Promises kept.
Beth [00:32:25] Absolutely. Well, if you're willing to roll forward from the nineties just a little bit, I have to know your thoughts on you Can't Always Get What You Want. And Donald Trump insists on using it. Trump, unlike most of the Republican politicians who have folded when artists have pressed them on the use of this songs, just keeps using everybody's music exactly the way he wants to. But I think that song is the funniest and most interesting choice.
Rob Harvilla [00:32:49] It is fascinating because it's the antithesis of what a politician is supposed to say. The whole point of being a politician is to say, I can get you what you want always. And so the purposeful dissonance of that, first of all, is very fascinating to me. But you're absolutely right. This has been happening my entire lifetime for decades. Republican politicians use this song, the artists gets mad. That makes headlines. And I have to conclude that it's worth it, that it's beneficial to the politician to piss off Tom Petty, to piss off Bruce Springsteen for the 50,000th time. Like you're sticking it to them. You're using their song for however long you get away with it and you're broadcasting that message that I embody this song's values, but I reject this artist's values. And that must be the calculus. This keeps happening. And I don't want to be cynical, but it has to keep happening because it works. And especially in the case of Trump, if Trump's entire value proposition is defiance and just like fuck you to everybody, then this is part of it too. The other norms he's going to break is he's not going to bow down to the Rolling Stones when the Rolling Stones try and get him to stop. This is part of what makes him such an effective candidate is. He's not going to deal with this shit anymore either.
Beth [00:34:22] I just think the song's use is fascinating too, because it's so menacing in a vague way. It's just like from the beginning he's telling us how this is going to go.
Rob Harvilla [00:34:32] And the children's choir, yeah. It's a fascinating cultural moment to think about. It's pretty upsetting. I think about Paul Ryan and Rage Against the Machine. And when everyone finds out that Paul Ryan's favorite band is Rage Against the Machine or whatever he says, your impulse is to be like, how could you? How could that be? Don't you listen to this? Don't you get the message? Like, how can you be so stupid as to listen to this band and think that they're endorsing any of your political values? But whatever you think about Paul Ryan, like, Paul Ryan's not stupid. Rage Against the Machine isn't going over his head. He just has the ability or the will or whatever to extract what he needs from Rage Against the Machine. He here's what he wants to hear. He filters out the rest. He can take 'fuck you I won't do what you tell me' and sort of apply it to whatever he wants to apply it to and just discard 95% of everything Rage Against the Machine ever said or stood for. And the Rolling Stones are not political generally, artistically in any way, but that same sort of calculus applies. That applies to Bruce Springsteen. Bruce Springsteen is a fascinating figure to me, in that he's, I think, left leaning, but he tries very hard not to lean too far into that. I think about Bruce Springsteen after 9/11. He puts out The Rising I think in 2002.
[00:36:03] And I think legitimately that record is one of the most effective post 9/11. Like, let's all do this. Let's all rebuild together. We're going to come together as a country. Like actual legitimate, stirring appeal to fundamental and universal American values. And I think that record is really effective in that way. And I don't know if it's the next one, but he puts out a record called Magic, which is not all about this, but it's as political as to my mind he's ever gotten. There are songs on it that are anti-war, anti-Iraq war against George W Bush, against Dick Cheney. And it's not super explicit to the point where it's alienating a lot of people. But I just think about the line that Bruce Springsteen always tried to walk where you know what he stood for, but he was trying so hard not to alienate everybody. And, obviously, he's one of the biggest rock stars ever. So he's been successful about that. But just the line you have to walk when no one is mad at you ever. And Rage Against the Machine is a band that was so explicit, so hilariously explicit from the beginning about what they believed in, who they were appealing to, and who the enemy was. And it's just wild to me that a politician that I think they would consider the enemy could still take their music and praise their music and associate himself with their music while discarding so much of the message of their music.
Beth [00:37:36] Yeah, it almost feels like a relic that Paul Ryan could praise Rage Against the Machine and that Bill Clinton could be collaborating with an artist who generally tried to not have everyone be angry at them. Like, I don't know if that can happen again. I hope it could someday, but not here in the 2024 cycle.
Rob Harvilla [00:37:53] I don't think so. Fight song and Hillary Clinton is more the way this happens now. It's unfortunate that I sort of wince to even think about that or say that out loud. But, yeah, You Can't Always Get What You Want you're absolutely right is the most striking candidate and campaign theme song combination in the last five, 10, 15, 20 years. But it's just the rest of them all for one reason or another are just super cringe.
Beth [00:38:28] I was trying to think about whether this matters. Just to people who aren't nerds like I am, does this matter to anyone? Does this matter to a campaign? I think it has to in the sense of generating headlines like you talked about. I do think that Republicans gain something by continually pissing off the elite artists or whatever. See, they don't even want us to like their music kind of stuff.
Rob Harvilla [00:38:53] Right.
Beth [00:38:54] The best analogy I could come up with is like walk up music at a baseball game that maybe it doesn't really affect the game, but psychologically it does do something to all of us in terms of how do we connect with this player? Do we do we like this person? How hard are we cheering for them?
Rob Harvilla [00:39:09] No, I think you're right that it's subconscious the vast majority of the time, and the only time that it tips over into is something we're all talking about is if the artist rejects it and you get that cycle. Or it's again something successful like Clinton and Fleetwood Mac or something hilariously unsuccessful like Tom Steyer and Juvenile. I think the vast majority of the time it's subconscious and it does matter. Of course, it matters. My entire career, my entire life is predicated on the idea that music affects you, whether you're thinking about it directly or not. And so these these choices matter, but it's not very often that you look right at them and really examine what's happening. I was thinking about Biden's virtual inauguration and how his big thing-- and it came up suddenly 24 hours. It was like, "Joe Biden and The New Radicals are getting back together for the first time in 25 years (or whatever it was) to play You Get What You Give." And everyone was like, what? Are you serious? And we all get our jokes off. I'm in early days of my podcast and I do an emergency episode of the podcast and we all have a lot of fun with that. And then somewhere in there I read that the reason for that is Beau Biden, because Beau Biden is struggling with cancer. And that song meant a lot to him and meant a lot to Joe. This whole damn world will break your heart. Don't be afraid. Follow your heart. And just all this cynicism and stupid jokes just drain out of you in a moment. And it was such a stark-- it almost never happens in politics, but just everything else falls away and it's just a person listening to a song and a song mattering so much to a person. And it was so striking to me the way that-- and also like the virtual inauguration and just the insane environment that we were in at that precise moment contributes to this surreal reaction to, like, Joe Biden got The New Radicals back together. But suddenly it's just a father and his son listening to a song as the son is dying. And you're just like, oh, my God. It's such a striking moment of realizing that all these people are human and like any humans, they have these incredibly intense and sincere emotional connections to a song. And the entire point of politics is the cynicism of it, the calculation of it, and just using the song or using the artist for what you can get out of it. But it was so wild to me to have such a jokey viral moment sort of just explode, and all that's left is this sort of very stark and striking human moment.
Beth [00:41:55] Yeah, that is the good kind of press that can come from a choice like this, for sure. And that really leads me to my last question for you. You've covered a lot of songs from the nineties, now far more than the '60. Thrilled with that. You can keep going as long as you'd like to, as far as I'm concerned, as a dedicated listener.
Rob Harvilla [00:42:15] All right.
Beth [00:42:16] But I wonder what the most political song you think that you've covered is? Defined broadly, not attached to a candidate or a party, but the song that really the artist intended to say something political with it.
Rob Harvilla [00:42:30] I've been thinking a lot about Let's Talk About Sex by Salt-N-Pepa which was from 1990. And I've been thinking a lot about pop music's response or non-response in the late eighties and early nineties to the AIDS crisis, to HIV. And I know there are other examples, but I couldn't think and I can't think of another example of just such a direct statement as Salt-N-Pepa made with Let's Talk About Sex. But then I think it was at Peter Jennings's request, he's doing like an ABC News special on on HIV and he asks them and they do. They rewrite it as Let's Talk About AIDS. And it's Salt-N-Pepa rapping about how you get AIDS and how you don't get AIDS. And it's like you don't get it from kissing or hugging or whatever. You get it from this, this. But delivered as like a buoyant, catchy, pop song, Salt-N-Pepa rap. And it's such a deliriously surreal moment, but it's stirring in its way too. That's the first thing that I think of. When thinking about Rage Against the Machine at the other end, this is a very harsh example, but cop killer by Ice-T for Body Count. And it was so striking. Like, it's his side projects that no one's paying a ton of attention to. And that record comes out and that song is out in the world, but no one cares really at first. And then I think it's like a Texas cop's daughter tells her dad about this song. And within like, what is it, weeks, months? The song is wiped almost off the planet. The backlash is so severe, Dan Quayle is involved, George Bush Senior is involved, and that song is taken off the record. And Ice-T said at the time, people in the record company are getting death threats. This isn't about me. This is about the people around me. But he capitulates. He takes the song off the record. It's still not on the record. If you buy it, it's still not streaming. Like it's as close as I can think of to a song being wiped from existence. It's on YouTube or whatever.
[00:45:06] And what's so striking about that is the song Cop Killer is totally unspinnable. You think that Rage Against the Machine are unspinnable and they mostly are, but you can still extract a defiance. You can you can just take again, 'fuck you. I won't do what you tell me' leave the rest, and convince yourself that Raging Against the Machine are speaking to and for you. Ice-T song Cop Killer which he was at pains to explain, it was like a fantasy; it was fictional. But you cannot spin that. You cannot make that say something other than what it's saying. And what it's saying is extremely harsh and confrontational. And that's why the song had to be destroyed, basically. And that's political in its way whether he meant it that way or not, whether or when he wrote the song, performed the song, whether he ever envisioned what would happen to it or not. He's on the cover of Rolling Stone in a police uniform off that. Cynically, you would say he got a lot of press for it. He got a lot of attention. A lot of people talked about that record and heard that record or parts of it more than they would have if none of this would have happened. But whether he meant it or not, that song became extremely political as well in the sense that it became totally untenable to, whatever, 50% of America.
Beth [00:46:33] Yeah, this is the hard thing about creating anything. You don't get to decide what conversation it starts. Maybe it'll start a conversation, but is it the one you intended? Who knows.
Rob Harvilla [00:46:42] Exactly. Yeah.
Beth [00:46:43] This has been a delight and such a treat for me. Thank you so much for spending time here.
Rob Harvilla [00:46:47] No, I'm honored. Thank you so much for having me.
Beth [00:46:49] So the podcast is 60 Songs That Explain the Nineties, out now, wherever you listen to your podcast. The book is Songs That Explain the Nineties out in November.
Rob Harvilla [00:46:58] November 7th, I think. Yeah, we got a while.
Beth [00:47:01] Thank you so much.
Rob Harvilla [00:47:02] Thank you.
Beth [00:47:13] Brian, you moved, as we talked about, from Utah to Kentucky, and you knew absolutely no one here. I want to talk about that experience for you all because Sarah and I talk a lot about how hard it is to make friends as adults on the show. And I feel like you and Jen must be experts at this and have lots of practical wisdom to share with people because you integrated so fast into the community here.
Brian Hart [00:47:34] When you said that you want to talk about this and that it's hard, I think I responded, "Yeah, it is so expletive hard." I won't use the expletive word here. It's pretty harsh. Like I said earlier, we had an opportunity to leave everything we knew and move and it was not, to a lot of people's surprise, not our first time. When we were early newlyweds, we had an opportunity to move to Alaska and live in a very small town where we knew very few people. We knew a handful, but we didn't know that many. And so we had to learn. How do you decide who you're going to be friends with? How do you build that community? And then we moved back to Utah and forgot everything we knew. And so when we decided to move across the country to Kentucky, we knew zero people. I knew the CEO of the agency I was going to come work for after two meetings. And my brother in law's parents, who I barely knew him, lived north of Cincinnati, and that's it. And so we were really nervous about it for us, for our kids, because when we lived in Utah, I've had the same three friends since the sixth grade that we would see each other every week. We still talk to each other almost every day. My wife's Jen's friends, they go back to way before then. They would see each other weekly more often, and we lived near them. We would walk to each other's houses. We had a very, very tight knit friend community that had its positives, also had its negatives. When you were that close to people, you don't get to ever hide anything. You also never really have any space. It is what it is. So when we moved, we talked about how are we going to, what do we want, what do we want to have in our friends and what how do we want to make this work? And we decided that we were going to be very intentional in how we find new friends. At 37, that's when we moved. I was 37 years old. How do we do this? And we decided in the beginning we would start with just surface level friends. We would share very, very little about ourselves. We would learn about other people and we would try to figure out where we fit in. We tried attending a local church that we had attended back in Utah, and we found that there really were a lot of really nice people who would probably even today drop everything and help me out. But there were really no friends there.
[00:49:39] Another thing we did is when we moved in, my son, who was nine, he had his birthday a couple weeks after and we decided we would have a birthday party for him. We didn't know anyone. We didn't know anyone in the neighborhood, but we knew there were a lot of kids because there were bikes everywhere. So we went around, we made an invitation that basically said, "You're invited to Jack's birthday party. If there are any children that live in this house." And we put in every single mailbox in our neighborhood and we planned a party, hired the world's worst magician, bought a ton of pizza, and hope people would show up. And they did. There were 60 or so people that showed up, and it gave us an opportunity to immerse ourselves in. Again, we could have celebrated his birthday very quietly. Not what he wanted to do, but we decided to make it a way to find people. And people showed up and we were able to figure out. It was an icebreaker for us to figure out what people wanted. We also decided that we were going to learn about what interest do we want to have with people, how do we want to build a relation? What was important to us? For us, we have three kids. We like the outdoors. We do like to travel. We're not rowdy people. We're very kind of chill people. So we wanted to find people like that. And so we were going through people trying to see what's going on. Again, we would talk about it. So me and Jen would talk about all the time. Have you met anyone? Okay. What were they like? How far did you talk to them? How do you want to go? And we would say, remember, stay surface level. We don't want to share too much. We want to make sure we're meeting people at the right space.
[00:51:05] And then COVID hit and then we decided, okay, we have nobody. We had no family. We had some surface level friends. And it gave us a chance to say, okay, who should we-- I don't know. Glob on to, for lack of a better word. How do we pod together with people? And that's where our friendship with you and Chad and your girls I think is where it became really strong for us. And we decided, okay, we're done dipping our toes in the water. We figured out who we like. We figured out who we want to be a part of in our community, and we're going to go all in. And so we're going to become friends with people. We're going to figure out a way. And we had to be open to kind of where everyone else was at, but we had to be a little pushy about it. I remember the first time we came home from hanging out with you guys when it was just the four of us one on one with each other, it was like our first date with just you guys. And we came home and I was like, "Okay, I'm a little intimidated by these guys. They've got their act together. They're super smart." And I was like, "That's cool. I'm really excited for what they're going to bring to the table and hopefully we can bring something to their table as well." And we decided also that everyone doesn't have to be the same level of friend. When we had our friends back in Utah, everyone was our best friend because we've known them our whole lives. And so everything had to be the same level of intensity. And we said, okay, we can have different layers of friends. I have my work colleagues. I'm very specific. I don't bring my work into my personal life as often as I possibly cannot keep it out. And so that's not where we're going to find friends. We also found that for like the church we were attending, we wanted to keep that kind of separate and have that kind of community.
[00:52:39] And then in our neighborhood, we have some people who, like Beth described, emergency contact. I think that's not a great way to describe it. They're a family. We have holidays together and there's other people in the neighborhood who do similar things. And that for us was what it was. It was very intentional and it was hard. It was very hard. And there were a lot of times where I know for me and for Jen, we would be at night like, "Do we really need friends? I mean, we're almost 40. We really like each other. Let's just get through the next 12 years, get our kids out of school, and then we'll go retire somewhere together." We got married very young. Too young. We lived together. It was just us for a very long time, so we are solid. And we thought maybe we don't need friends, but we did. We definitely did. And we've gotten so much out of those friendships and they continue to evolve and we've even got to the point where we're not afraid now to say, "Okay, some of these surface level friendships we made, they're going to stay at that surface level." We know them, they know us. I will bring in your mail. I will take out your dog, all those great things. And there's other people who it's like, if something happens to you or to me, I need you to take my kids or I need to take your kids. There's different levels that you can get at and it's choosing where you want each person to be and not being afraid to say everyone doesn't have to be your best friend. Other people can just be good neighbors or good friends who can help you out or come to a party, come to a barbecue.
Beth [00:53:58] I love that you guys thought so much about this, talked about it, processed it, gave it such a long period of time. I do think COVID probably accelerated all of my relationships in one way or another. There were people I realized like, oh, I didn't I didn't reach out to you. Not that I didn't miss you, but just we've drifted in different directions and that's okay. No hard feelings. It's just that's the way life goes. And then the people that I want to spend time with that became super intense during COVID. I want to know, since you guys have spent so much time processing this, how much proximity matters. I think that proximity has allowed our families to just log the hours that you need to log with people to become really close. I do feel like you all are family now after a really short period of time, because we've put the hours in and that's because it's easy to walk to your house or for you to walk to our house. I wonder how you see that in other relationships.
Brian Hart [00:54:54] It's true. I think we are the epitome of once we find our crew and our people, we will do everything we can to protect that relationship to the point where a year ago when we needed to move out our house, it wasn't fitting us any longer, we moved three doors down and we waited a year to find the right house to literally stay in our neighborhood because we had built these friendships. And our fear was if we moved two blocks away, could we have this same very tight core relationship with all the people that we had? We also have found that there are some people we're having a few miles away is really nice. We have some friends who are living in Utah and who knows their situation is looking like they may move somewhere. And we keep saying Kentucky is amazing and you guys would do really well in Lexington or Louisville, which is about an hour away from us. So we thought that would be a good place to be. We've also, in finding new relationships, how to maintain all the relationships has been equally as hard. And so we've been very focused on making sure that we visit with friends. Jen and her friends will go every few months and they'll find the cheapest place all of them can fly to. And oftentimes for some reason, it's as exciting as Denver, Colorado, when there's something to do. And then they go and they meet up and then they break up and leave to go to their own places. But having the people close by has made it that more strong for us because I know if I need something, my friend is right there. I'm not worried about it. I can walk up there. You may be surprised at how often sometimes we drive up there. It's a whole thing. But I think that makes a difference. And for us, our kids, it makes a difference for them too as they're building their friendships, that I hope they'll go back and look at and say, "Oh, I've been friends with these guys since we moved to Kentucky and I was in the first grade. I've been friends with them my whole life." And they're going to have their own life experiences and hopefully will find bigger, different friendships as well. But they'll still have the ones they made here.
Beth [00:56:52] So I want to help people who are in that initial phase of like they found some surface level people, but they want to find their best friend family. I think something that our families have done that's been so helpful is just like creating the ritual of Sunday dinner. We talked about it for a long time. I think you were the one who was finally like, "It's time to do this, guys. We need to do it." And so tell people about Sunday dinner and what you all like about it.
Brian Hart [00:57:16] Yeah. So I am a person who loves ritual, who loves things that go together. If you've got a good cult out there, I will be bought into it pretty good. I just like ritual. I like when everyone's doing the same thing. I like when tour groups are matching clothes. It's so weird, but I love it. And the fact that we do something together each week. So every Sunday night we do dinner and we trade off between houses, and some weeks it doesn't work. And we just say, hey, it's not working this week and it's fine and we don't stress about it. We're sad about it, but it doesn't kill the relationship.
Beth [00:57:48] No one ever gets mad..
Brian Hart [00:57:50] Beth's canceled, so now we're not friends anymore. No. But we just get together, we eat a meal. Our kids are there. Typically, the kids eat their meal. We eat our meal as adults. Use that time. We play cards every time. It is important to me that we play nuts every time so that we can continue to play cards with each other. But what it's done is it gives you a point in time where you're focused on what's happening, not with work, not with the rest of your family stress, nothing else but just with your friends. We're just there. We're having dinner. It's not like a big to do where you have to clean the whole house and you have to make a fancy dinner. It's like, hey, this week we order pizza, and this week we're trying a new recipe. And yeah, we're going to eat in here because that room is a disaster today. So we're all going to kind of eat in shifts or on folding chairs. But the idea that we have something that always happens. And I know for my work, I travel a lot, so I'm not here for all of them. But to know it's still happening or not is really important for me because it creates opportunity where you're not forced to be together, but you can plan to be together. And so there's not this stress of, well, I haven't seen them in a while. How do I make that call? It's like, no, this is happening every week. And it's helped make that friendship a little stronger. But also for our kids, they're used to it now too and they really enjoy it. And even as our oldest children are becoming to the point where they don't want to go to their parent's friend's house for dinner, they're like we have to stay for dinner; my other friends are going fishing I'd rather go fishing. And we say, "No, we do this as a family. It's our family dinner." And they don't fight us. They just go. Sometimes they leave early, but I think it shows them how to keep things important. I think also for us, what we did to go from surface level to another level is eventually we did plan to go away together. I mean, I feel like these discussions are very similar to when you're going to date someone very long term. We're like, let's go on a trip together. It's a small trip. I'll see how that goes. And it went great. Okay, we could do this again. We could go on a longer trip. And now there's other people like we've done that before and we say never again. They're going back to surface level friends because we can't handle two days alone in a cabin with them.
Beth [00:59:58] Yeah, I do feel like the first time I think I invited you all over to dinner, I had that like I'm asking someone to prom feeling. it just takes a lot of vulnerability and risk, and there is a chemistry that's either there or it's not with people. And I think the hardest part about making friends with another family is that you really need everybody to be able to match up. To me knowing that Chad and Jen could hang out, like we can we can hang out in any combination. Our kids, I could put in any combination and trust them to stay home alone together. Like any grouping of our children I feel really good about. That's hard to find. And I do think once you find it, it takes a lot of cultivation. But then it's just the best. I'm just so glad you all are here. It's the best.
Brian Hart [01:00:43] And now it's easy. We've we moved to sit it down and then the next days will convince you to come over we go next, so it'll be perfect.
Beth [01:00:51] I think that's right. I don't intend for y'all to go to the ocean by yourselves. And I am worried about climate. As we talked about in the first steps, we have to discuss which body of water.
Brian Hart [01:00:59] Right. Because my long term plan is to finish work and then retire to the beach and rent snorkel gear to tourists. I'm very vocal about it.
Beth [01:01:06] I know. I just think that a river or a lake with that kind of prospect might be more reasonable.
Brian Hart [01:01:11] It might be more reasonable at that point. There may be no beaches.
Beth [01:01:15] Well, thank you so much for talking to me today, Brian, and for sharing all this with our listeners. Thank you all for listening. We'll be back with you on Tuesday to talk Supreme Court decisions. And until then, have the best weekend available.
Beth Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director. Sarah Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music. Beth Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.
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