Power Ballots

Photograph by Ben Alsop

In the last 30 years, this trend has only grown more pronounced. As primary season heated up in 2007 and early 2008, Paul Simon serenaded crowds in Iowa on behalf of Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd. John Mellencamp, Jackson Browne, and Bonnie Raitt hit the road, guitars in tow, to support John Edwards. Hillary Clinton's camp has boasted appearances and support from Elvis Costello, Timbaland, the Wallflowers, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Mýa, and Tony Bennett. And then there is Obama, whose candidacy has inspired a wide-ranging list of artists that includes Fall Out Boy, Pearl Jam, the Cool Kids, the Goo Goo Dolls, John Legend, will.i.am, Bright Eyes, Win Butler, Kidz in the Hall, Jeff Tweedy, Ne-Yo, OK Go, and the aforementioned Usher to perform at rallies, record songs, or just lend their celebrity luster to his campaign.

"Music is a great convener," says Erin Potts, executive director of Air Traffic Control, a nonprofit organization that provides musicians with resources to bolster their political activism. "When people come together, great things can happen. Movements can be built."

But as this election cycle's long summer begins, what exactly is being built? Do voters really listen when Usher or John Mellencamp speak up for a candidate? Even if some do, what about the others who roll their eyes at the idea of political wisdom being dished out by what they see as wealthy dilettantes? In the end, have artists become -- like attack ads, know-nothing pollsters, or James Carville -- just one more noisy distraction on a campaign trail already filled with them?

Air Traffic Control documented more than 3,000 music-related events around the 2004 elections. Of those, the biggest was arguably the Vote for Change tour. Organized by the managers for Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, R.E.M., and the Dixie Chicks, in conjunction with MoveOn.org, to unseat President Bush, the ten-date tour featured 22 different acts playing in different combinations for 40 different shows in states deemed up for grabs in the following month's election, with proceeds going to the now-defunct liberal political action group America Coming Together.

"Vote for Change was the first concert built around strategy," says MoveOn cultural director Laura Dawn. "It toured through swing states, and in order to attend, you had to make a donation to a political action committee. You were seeing a level of intelligence and strategy from artists working with activists that you'd never seen before."