With Taylor Swift broadcasting her call for Joe Biden, the #Grime4Starmer movement not happening and Dua Lipa all but over, is the alliance between youth culture and electoral politics finally here? Is it over?
The Labour Party has captured the cultural zeitgeist like never before, and every talented young celebrity is lining up to support Keir Starmer. The stars are all here: Carol Vorderman! Rod Stewart! Erm… Deborah Meadon. Dragon's Den!
But not everyone has jumped on the hype, including a little-known singer-songwriter named Dua Lipa (and no, not me). Radio Times Last week Ms Ripa, who was an enthusiastic supporter of Jeremy Corbyn in 2019, said: “I've always supported the Labour party and I will always remain that way, but I don't think I'll publicly support or oppose anyone… because politicians, on the whole, tend to disappoint people.”
Dua Lipa's newfound disinterest reflects a larger decline in engagement with politics. There may be widespread relief at finally ousting the Conservatives, but few people, famous or not, are excited about the new administration. In contrast to the support Jeremy Corbyn enjoyed in previous elections, celebrities are largely absent from this one. Across the Atlantic, Joe Biden has a similar problem. He has relied on the support of trusted liberal stalwarts (many of whom are in their 70s and 80s, such as Harrison Ford, Barbra Streisand and Steven Spielberg) but is struggling to connect with younger voters who have an overwhelmingly negative view of him. His efforts to go viral on social media have been met with criticism. Failure, And he has yet to secure the endorsement of Taylor Swift that his campaign had hoped for. I believe This may be the key to victory. The torture geriatrics department has a big problem.
Does declining celebrity endorsement really matter? In the UK, not really. Labour will win a majority no matter what Yungblud posts on his Instagram story. Biden could lose the election, but it would be because of widespread concerns about his age, the economy, and his handling of the Gaza war. Taylor Swift releasing a surprise double album about the Inflation Act would make little difference. Celebrity endorsements have a poor track record when it comes to guaranteeing electoral success. In 2016, Hillary Clinton got enthusiastic endorsements from the likes of Lena Dunham, Lady Gaga, and Amy Schumer, but believe it or not, this strategy failed to appeal to working-class voters in rural Virginia.
The alliance between youth culture and electoral politics has at times been more fruitful: in 2017, the Grime4Corbyn movement helped Labour win 77% of the ethnic minority vote, and also contributed to the highest youth voter turnout since 1992. But by the 2019 election, the movement had run out of steam. One of the artists involved, AJ Tracey, later said: Accused The labour of continuing to ignore the grime community until they needed their support again, at which point it was too late.
Musicians and celebrities have endorsed political candidates in the past, but it has often been bitter disappointment. In the run up to the 1997 election, the Labour Party went all out to attract some of the most zeitgeisty cultural figures of the time, and many of them gladly obliged. Some of the most influential Britpop musicians (such as Blur's Damon Albarn and Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher), actors, comedians and fashion designers all came forward to support Tony Blair. Youth culture in 1997 was swept up in a wave of optimism about the New Labour government.
But it didn't take long for disillusionment to set in. Within a year, NME Published The cover carried the headline “Have you ever felt cheated?”. The article attacked the Labour party for betraying young people by cutting unemployment benefits, introducing university tuition fees, legislation allowing local authorities to impose curfews on teenagers, and not even debating the liberalisation of Britain's drug laws. By this point it was clear that Blair's approach to youth culture was merely self-serving, and that New Labour was heading in a much more authoritarian direction than it had promised during the election campaign. Kevin Shields, frontman of My Bloody Valentine, said: Alleged Years after it emerged that Britpop was a psy-op orchestrated by MI5, does it speak to the waning power of the Deep State, which can't even afford to hire Ollie Alexander in 2024? Perhaps that's for the best. By refusing to support Starmer, today's musicians at least avoid the embarrassment of having to go back to a year when everything still sucked.
Young people in general are not impressed by Starmer or Biden, so musicians and other cultural figures should not be an exception. Chappell Lone, for example, recently declined an invitation to perform at the White House Pride event, citing the administration’s failure to ensure “freedom, rights and justice for all.” (She also began her speech calling for “transgender rights,” “women’s rights” and “freedom for all oppressed peoples in the occupied territories.”) Lone is not an outlier in these views; most of her generation, and certainly most of her own fanbase, would agree. As recently as 2020, associating with the Democratic Party might have been a way to position oneself as a person of integrity, a good person who speaks out and stands up for what really matters. But with the party directly complicit in the deaths of an estimated 37,000 Palestinians, this is no longer the case. introduce Choosing to side with Joe Biden now, with draconian new immigration laws that would thwart people seeking asylum at the Mexican border, would be a decision with different implications, one that would alienate a significant portion, perhaps a majority, of the young artist's fan base. Loan may have been acting in good faith when he turned down the White House offer, but it was also a wise career decision.
Parallel to the current unpopularity of left-of-centre politicians, there has also been a major shift in the relationship between music and politics: “Politicians like Blair were able to leverage the assets of music because music was part of a strong and relatively coherent counterculture. That doesn't really exist anymore, at least not in the same form as before.” Dr. Alex NivenA lecturer in English literature at Newcastle University and author of a number of books on the interplay between politics and culture, he told Dazed: “This isn't some 'music was better in the '90s' or any of that nonsense argument – in fact there is probably more innovative music in Britain now than there was in the Britpop era – but music in the second half of the 20th century intermingled with political culture, lifestyles and social norms in a way that it doesn't today.”
“A politician like Blair was able to tap into a treasure trove of music because it was part of a powerful and relatively coherent counterculture that no longer exists” – Alex Niven
The big difference today is that, while there is still plenty of space where music and politics overlap, young people are no longer seeking to politicise music culture in the same way. “They get politics in a more pure form through social media and the internet,” says Dr Niven. Both Starmer and Biden's camps appear to recognise the increasing dominance of the internet over traditional celebrities by prioritising influencers in their efforts to reach young voters (interestingly, the Labour Party has “Micro-influencersPoliticians love to back “people with big followings” who are perceived as more trustworthy than those with millions of followers. But this strategy hasn't worked for either politician. Whatever chances each of them has in the upcoming elections, their unpopularity seems persistent and inevitable. This is cause for optimism: young people are not so fickle, foolish, or susceptible to voting against their interests or abandoning their beliefs just because someone on TikTok tells them to do so. If politicians want to win young people's support, they will have to offer something more substantial than newer, slicker marketing gimmicks.
Just because youth culture has opted out of aligning itself with mainstream politicians doesn't mean it's finished as a political force. Quite the opposite: in recent months, hundreds of bands have shown their solidarity with Palestine, organizing fundraisers, speaking out on social media, and releasing downloads and other music. The Great Escape, Barclays ( Boycott Movement This is obviously a more meaningful form of political activism than singing songs to a sleepy Joe Biden, tweeting the word “Vote,” or sipping champagne at a celebratory lunch with Rachel Reeves. There's no need to lament the loss of celebrity endorsements when there's nothing worthy of them.