Music has prehistoric roots and has throughout history been shown to have a significant effect on humankind. Under this premise, our book explains how music has been used in American presidential campaigns during the country's history. We describe the ways that song use has evolved over the last two centuries, including how initial campaign songs took existing music and added new lyrics, how music became more and more intertwined with the campaigns and their messages in the nineteenth century, how campaign songs are now largely taken from existing popular music tunes, and how the Internet is quickly changing music's relationship to presidential campaigns. Ours is ultimately a book about the use of music and American political development, as it describes how political transformations such as America's changing party structure and technological advancements like radio have affected music's use in presidential campaigns.

Music has long played a role in American presidential campaigns as a mode of both expressing candidates' messages and criticizing the opposition. The 2016 campaign was no exception and was a game changer similar to the development of music in the 1840 campaign, when "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" helped sing William Harrison into the White House. The ten chapters in this collection place music use in 2016 in historical perspective before examining musical messaging, strategy, and parody. The book ultimately explores causality: how do music and musicians affect presidential elections, and how do politicians and campaigns affect music and musicians? The authors explain this interaction from various perspectives, with methodological approaches from several fields, including political science, legal studies, musicology, cultural studies, rhetorical studies, and communications and journalism. These chapters will help the reader understand music in the 2016 election to realize how music will be relevant in 2020 and beyond.