Tunes Du Jour Celebrates Presidents’ Day

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From folk protest to funk, punk rock to hip-hop, this eclectic Presidents’ Day playlist spans decades of American political commentary through the lens of popular music. Not every commander-in-chief makes an appearance—some presidencies inspired little musical response, while others (particularly Kennedy, Reagan, and George W. Bush) sparked entire catalogs of artistic reaction. The collection moves chronologically through the office holders, though the songs themselves range from contemporary responses to retrospective reflections, capturing how each president’s legacy resonated with musicians of different eras and genres. Whether celebratory, satirical, or scathing, these tracks remind us that popular music has always served as a vital form of political discourse, holding power accountable and giving voice to the frustrations, hopes, and criticisms of the American people.

James K. Polk – They Might Be Giants
An infectiously catchy history lesson that chronicles Polk’s ambitious single-term presidency and his campaign promises to expand American territory.

Abie Baby – Hair Original Cast
This number from the groundbreaking musical Hair celebrates Abraham Lincoln’s legacy of emancipation with psychedelic 1960s exuberance.

Louisiana 1927 – Randy Newman
Newman’s haunting ballad captures the devastating Mississippi River flood during Calvin Coolidge’s administration and the government’s inadequate response.

We’d Like To Thank You Herbert Hoover – Annie Original Broadway Cast
A Depression-era shantytown chorus sarcastically thanks Hoover for the economic catastrophe that left Americans destitute and homeless.

Harry Truman – Chicago
This gentle rock ballad uses Truman as a symbol of simpler times and American authenticity before the cynicism of later decades.

Eisenhower Blues – The Costello Show Feat. The Attractions & Confederates
Costello’s cheeky cover plays with 1950s nostalgia while questioning the era’s conformity and Cold War anxieties.

Murder Most Foul – Bob Dylan
Dylan’s seventeen-minute meditation on the Kennedy assassination weaves together American mythology, cultural memory, and the loss of innocence.

President Kennedy – Eddie Izzard
The British comedian takes on the misunderstanding that President Kennedy declared himself to be a doughnut.

The Day John Kennedy Died – Lou Reed
Reed’s stark, melancholic reflection places Kennedy’s death in the context of personal memory and national trauma.

Lyndon Johnson Told The Nation – Tom Paxton
Paxton’s folk protest song sardonically captures LBJ’s escalation of the Vietnam War and the duplicity of official statements.

You Haven’t Done Nothin’ – Stevie Wonder
Wonder’s funky, cutting critique of Nixon’s broken promises and political corruption became an anthem of Watergate-era disillusionment.

Impeach the President – Honey Drippers
This funk instrumental’s famous drum break refers to Nixon, though it’s become better known as one of hip-hop’s most sampled beats.

Funky President (People It’s Bad) – James Brown
The Godfather of Soul delivers hard-hitting social commentary on economic hardship during the Ford administration.

(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang – Heaven 17
British synth-pop warriors take aim at Reagan’s cowboy diplomacy and the early 1980s conservative political climate.

Ronnie, Talk to Russia – Prince
Prince’s Cold War plea urges Reagan to pursue diplomacy and nuclear disarmament before it’s too late.

Bonzo Goes to Bitburg – Ramones
The punk legends blast Reagan’s controversial visit to a German cemetery containing SS graves, delivered with their signature three-chord fury.

Old Mother Reagan – Violent Femmes
The Femmes’ acoustic punk assault critiques Reagan’s policies with youthful anger and folk-punk energy.

Reagan – Killer Mike
The Atlanta rapper delivers a scathing indictment of Reagan’s policies on race, drugs, and economics decades after leaving office.

5 Minutes (B-B-B Bombing Mix) – Bonzo Goes To Washington
This mashup satirizes Reagan’s notorious hot-mic joke about bombing Russia by splicing it with dance beats.

If Reagan Played Disco – Minutemen
The iconoclastic punk band imagines an absurdist alternate reality with their typically angular, political edge.

Fuck You – Lily Allen
Allen’s chipper, profanity-laced dismissal of George W. Bush was initially posted on her MySpace page under the title “Guess Who Batman.”

When the President Talks to God – Bright Eyes
Conor Oberst’s devastating critique questions Bush’s certainty and religious justifications during the Iraq War.

Mosh – Eminem
Eminem’s urgent call to political action rallied young voters against Bush’s policies in the 2004 election.

Let’s Impeach the President – Neil Young
Young’s protest rocker methodically lists grievances against Bush with straightforward outrage and rock-and-roll directness.

I’m With Stupid – Pet Shop Boys
The synth-pop duo skewers Tony Blair’s subservience to Bush’s foreign policy agenda with biting British wit.

Dear Mr. President – P!nk featuring Indigo Girls
P!nk’s open letter challenges Bush to walk in others’ shoes and confront the human cost of his decisions.

Obama – ANOHNI
This haunting piece wrestles with disappointment in Obama’s continuation of drone warfare despite his hopeful campaign promises.

Fuck Donald Trump – YG & Nipsey Hussle
The West Coast rappers deliver an unfiltered denunciation of Trump’s rhetoric and policies with raw urgency.

The President Can’t Read – Amy Rigby
Rigby’s folk-rock takedown questions Trump’s competence and intellectual curiosity with pointed observations.

Streets of Minneapolis – Bruce Springsteen
The Boss’s response to the killings of American citizens by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement under directions from President Trump.

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Tunes Du Jour Presents ANOHNI

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To listen to ANOHNI is, first and foremost, to experience a voice of unmistakable character. It’s a voice that can convey profound fragility and immense power, often within the same breath. A glance at a playlist of her work reveals a career of evolution, an artistic journey that moves from the deeply personal to the unflinchingly political, all while maintaining a core of radical vulnerability.

The early material, released as Antony & the Johnsons, established a unique musical world. Songs like “Hope There’s Someone” and “You Are My Sister” are built around lush arrangements of piano and strings, creating a sound that feels both classic and entirely new. This was the setting for songs of intense personal disclosure, exploring themes of gender identity in “For Today I Am A Boy,” longing for connection in “Cripple And The Starfish,” and the complex nature of love in “Fistful Of Love.” The music is intimate, as if you’re hearing confessions shared in confidence, yet the emotional scale feels grand and operatic.

Later came a jarring, brilliant shift with the 2016 album Hopelessness, released under the name ANOHNI. Here, she traded the orchestral arrangements for stark, powerful electronic production. This sonic change mirrored a thematic one: the focus turned outward. The intense vulnerability that characterized her earlier work was now directed at global crises. On “Drone Bomb Me,” she sings from the perspective of a girl wishing for death from the sky, and on “4 Degrees,” she confronts her own complicity in climate change. It was a confrontational and necessary evolution, proving that her emotional honesty could be a potent tool for political commentary.

This ability to inhabit different sonic and emotional spaces is also clear in her many collaborations and interpretations. On the playlist, we hear her voice providing the soaring, soulful center of Hercules & Love Affair’s house anthem “Blind,” and intertwining with Björk’s on the elemental duet “The Dull Flame Of Desire.” She can also take a well-known song, like Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” or Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love,” and imbue it with a gravity that makes it feel entirely her own, stripping it down to its most sorrowful and honest core.

The recent return to the name ANOHNI and the Johnsons suggests a blending of these threads. Tracks like “It Must Change” and “Sliver of Ice” bring back the soulful, organic instrumentation of the Johnsons, but the perspective feels informed by the clear-eyed global awareness of the ANOHNI material. What remains constant across all of these projects is a profound empathy and a refusal to look away from difficult truths, whether they are found within the self or in the wider world. Her body of work isn’t just a collection of songs, but a continuous, courageous act of testimony.

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Tunes Du Jour Presents The John Lennon Songbook

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It’s interesting to start a playlist of John Lennon songs with David Bowie’s “Fame.” It feels like an outlier at first, until you remember Lennon co-wrote the track, contributed guitar, and sang backup vocals. It’s one of just a handful of songs on this list that isn’t a straightforward cover, and its placement at the top serves as a great reminder: one of the best ways to understand a songwriter’s impact is to see how their work thrives in the hands of others. Listening to a collection like this isn’t just about nostalgia; it’s an active exploration of how durable and adaptable Lennon’s compositions truly are, revealing the deep-seated melodic and lyrical strengths that invite constant reinterpretation.

The sheer variety of artists drawn to his work speaks volumes about its fundamental structure. A Lennon song can be a sturdy vessel for almost any style. In its original form, “Help!” was a desperate plea disguised as an upbeat folk-rock hit. But when Tina Turner gets ahold of it, she strips away the disguise, transforming it into a full-throated, soulful cry for salvation. Similarly, Johnny Cash takes “In My Life,” a song of youthful reflection, and imbues it with the profound weight of a long life lived, making each line land with a different, more somber gravity. From the raw R&B groove Otis Redding finds in “Day Tripper” to the cool, atmospheric poise Roxy Music brings to “Jealous Guy,” these songs prove to be exceptionally resilient, their core emotions accessible to any genre.

Beyond musical versatility, the playlist highlights the different facets of Lennon’s lyrical persona. There’s the acerbic political commentator, whose pointed dissatisfaction is channeled perfectly by the punk sneer of Generation X on “Gimme Some Truth” and the world-weary defiance of Marianne Faithfull on “Working Class Hero.” Then there is the deeply vulnerable Lennon, the man wrangling with insecurity and fame. You can hear this in the anxious, propulsive energy The Feelies bring to “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide (Except Me And My Monkey)” or the stark, pleading quality Maxïmo Park finds in the solo track “Isolation.” He could be pointedly political or achingly personal, and both modes have continued to resonate with artists who have their own truths to tell.

Of course, no look at Lennon’s work would be complete without touching on his more surreal and experimental side. These are often the songs that seem most tied to a specific time, yet they possess a dreamlike logic that continues to inspire. Elton John, a friend and collaborator, treats “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” not as a museum piece but as a glam-rock epic. R.E.M. leans into the hypnotic, floating quality of “#9 Dream,” while Fiona Apple’s take on “Across the Universe” honors its ethereal nature while grounding it with her distinctive emotional intensity. These artists don’t just copy the psychedelia; they find new ways to access the spirit of imaginative freedom that fueled the original recordings.

Ultimately, listening through these interpretations feels less like a tribute and more like a conversation across decades. We hear Billy J. Kramer’s simple pop charm on “Bad to Me,” a song Lennon wrote for him in 1963, and then Glen Campbell’s posthumous, heart-rending version of “Grow Old With Me,” one of Lennon’s last compositions. The journey between those two points is remarkable. This collection of songs, re-shaped by everyone from The Breeders to Bettye LaVette, demonstrates that the power of Lennon’s work isn’t just in his own iconic recordings. It’s in the bones of the songs themselves—the unforgettable melodies, the honest lyrics, and the restless spirit that others can’t help but be drawn to, again and again.

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Tunes Du Jour Celebrates Pride 2025

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Every June, Pride Month invites us to honor the LGBTQ+ community—not just its triumphs and ongoing struggles, but its wildly varied voices. This playlist, drawn from over six decades of music, is less a neat collection than a vibrant mix of statements, emotions, and identities. From Sylvester’s ecstatic disco classic “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” to Billie Eilish’s “LUNCH,” the selections aren’t organized by genre, time period, or even theme. That’s fitting. The LGBTQ+ experience is too broad and multifaceted to be summed up by any single sound.

Some tracks speak directly to queerness, like Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” which namechecks drag queens and trans women, or Bronski Beat’s spiritual descendants, the Scissor Sisters, with their cheeky, loving anthem “Take Your Mama.” Others, like “Rocket Man” or “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,” resonated with queer audiences before the artists behind them publicly came out—or even if they never did. There’s a history of coded expression here, of lyrics that offered solace to those reading between the lines.

Then there are the songs that became anthems of empowerment by sheer force of feeling: Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” offered a lifeline to LGBTQ+ youth when it first aired on MTV, while Madonna’s “Vogue” gave a global spotlight to a ballroom culture that had long gone ignored by the mainstream. Judy Garland’s “Over the Rainbow” might seem quaint next to Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!,” but both songs capture longing, whether for love, acceptance, or the audacity to want more.

What unites these artists isn’t a single identity but a shared defiance—sometimes quiet, sometimes flamboyant—against what’s expected. Whether it’s the punkish ache of Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)” or the glossy Pet Shop Boys cover of “Go West,” the throughline is the refusal to shrink. Pride, in this sense, isn’t about perfection or performance. It’s about visibility, honesty, and a community that keeps evolving, note by note.

So, while this playlist won’t tell a single story, that’s exactly the point. Pride has never been about uniformity. It’s about claiming your truth, however it sounds—and blasting it through the speakers so someone else knows they’re not alone.

Hear last year’s Pride playlist here.

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Tunes Du Jour Celebrates World Kindness Day

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Today is World Kindness Day. While every day would be a great day to practice basic human decency, some people are nasty assbags with no regard for others. If you’re one of those walking masterpieces of jackholery, here’s a wild idea: try being kind for ONE WHOLE DAY and see what it does. For example, let’s say you’re the personal assistant to someone who lives in a building with other residents. When you’re walking out of the building’s front door just in front of a neighbor who is holding his 17-year-old blind dog and leading his other pupper on a leash, maybe – and I’m just spitballing here – don’t let the door slam in their face, you self-absorbed piece of human garbage. And if said neighbor thoughtfully moves your precious Tesla charging cable to prevent damage (gasp – the audacity of helping!), perhaps, don’t show up at his door and berate him for protecting your property. Wild concept: Show some gratitude for his thoughtfulness. Consider saying “thank you,” you self-important, unreasonable, entitled, high-handed weenie.

FFS people, be kind! Rewind!

(Any resemblance to persons unfortunately living is purely intentional.)

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