During my first presidential campaign, I became a bit particular — maybe even a little superstitious — about my debate-day rituals. I had to get in a quick workout, and always ordered the same dinner. And then, in the half hour or so before the main event, I’d set aside whatever notes and talking points my staff had given me, put on some earbuds, and just listen to some music.
Initially, I listened to a handful of jazz classics — Miles Davis’ “Freddie Freeloader,” John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.” But over time, I discovered that rap was the thing that got my head in the right place. A couple of songs about defying the odds and putting it all on the line — Jay-Z’s “My 1st Song” and Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” — were always in the rotation, maybe because they felt suited to my early underdog status. Sitting alone in the back of the Secret Service SUV on my way to the venue, nodding to the beat, I would feel the pomp and circumstance and artifice of my immediate surroundings melt away. I’d find my mind returning to those things that were most essential to me — the friends and family that had shaped me; the values and ideals that drove me; and all the forgotten voices of people across the country that I hoped to someday represent.
Music has always had the ability to speak to us, and for us, in a way nothing else can. Which is why, if you want to understand the past 250 years of American life, one of the best ways to do it is to listen to the music that defined this great nation of ours.
When enslaved people were first brought to our shores hundreds of years ago, the music in their hearts gave them the strength and courage for what lay ahead. Spirituals weren’t mere entertainment. They were, as W.E.B. Du Bois would later describe, “the articulate message of the slave to the world” — a way of insisting on the humanity that others tried to deny them.
That same spirit helped animate the women’s suffrage movement. Rally songs written to the tune of “Yankee Doodle” and “America (My Country, ’Tis of Thee)” became an important part of marches and pickets, and because everyone already knew how to sing them, organizers didn’t have to print sheet music. All they had to do was hand out a new set of lyrics.
Later, riding freight trains during the Great Depression, Woody Guthrie listened to the songs of Dust Bowl migrants and immigrant laborers. He wrote “This Land Is Your Land” in response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” arguing that this country belonged to the struggling and the marginalized as much as it did to the privileged and pedigreed.
The tradition found its fullest expression during the Civil Rights Movement, which was, among other things, a singing movement. “We Shall Overcome” and other gospel songs echoed through jail cells and church basements, creating a bond that no billy club or fire hose could break. And when, at the March on Washington, Mahalia Jackson called out to Dr. King to “Tell them about the dream, Martin!” she was doing what musicians have always done at their best: arriving at the truth, then waiting for the rest of us to catch up.
Throughout the Sixties and Seventies, popular music would continue to spur on social change, asking the questions that needed to be asked. During the Vietnam War, protest songs like “Fortunate Son,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “What’s Going On” became part of the air this country breathed. Meanwhile, songs like Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee” spoke for the working-class Americans who felt the protest movement had nothing to say to, or about, them — reminding us that in a big, rambunctious nation like America, we can never presume to expect everyone to sing to the same tune.
Years later, young Black and Latino kids in the Bronx used turntables to remake popular music yet again. Like all of the best music, hip-hop wasn’t just a diversion — it was journalism set to a beat, with songs like “The Message,” by Grandmaster Flash, describing a reality most of the country had never had to confront. And over the next few decades, a genre of music created by people demanding dignity and respect would become the most popular music in the world.
Of course, none of these forms of expression existed in isolation. The reason American popular music has always been so rich and evocative, so powerfully alive, is that it reflects the mongrel, polyglot aspect of our society — blending everything from African rhythms to Irish folk music, the melodies of the concert hall to juke-joint blues. That’s why American music is constantly renewing itself, and why, at its best, it resonates beyond our borders — for it contains elements from every corner of the globe.
Partly because it draws on and experiments with so many different traditions, American music has often spoken to our most pressing issues, conflicts, and contradictions before our politics does. Not because musicians are wiser than politicians — although many are — but because music operates by different rules.
Music doesn’t have to win a majority of voters. It doesn’t need to appeal to the lowest common denominator or lay out a 10-point plan. It just has to be true enough for people to see themselves in it. It just has to remind people that they’re not alone in their fears and their struggles, their hopes and their dreams. Great music has a way of helping us feel seen; more than that, it helps us see others, enlarging our hearts and our moral imaginations. That’s how the spirituals preached emancipation before the Proclamation was signed, rock & roll encouraged integration before the Civil Rights Act was passed, and the protest songs got the wrongness of Vietnam long before the government could admit it.
Again and again, music showed us the way. And eventually, America followed.
In the White House, Michelle and I would set aside nights to honor and celebrate the music that has shaped America, from classical and country to blues, Broadway, gospel, Motown, Latin, and jazz. And when we were designing the Obama Presidential Center — which opens in June on the South Side of Chicago — we included a recording studio and a performance space so the next generation of voices can hold a mirror up to this country, with all its beauty and flaws, and lead us somewhere better.
Because America has always been worth singing about — and those songs are a form of faith. Faith that our unlikely experiment in self-government is not yet finished. Faith that America is what we make of it. The songs themselves will keep changing, but my greatest hope is that the faith in our democracy remains the same, and that together we can continue the glorious task of bringing America closer to what we know it can be.
BARACK OBAMA is the 44th president of the United States. The Obama Presidential Center opens to the public on the South Side of Chicago in June.
‘Karma’s a Bitch’: Boy George on Why Culture Club Recreated Their Biggest Hit With AI
More than 40 years after its original release, Boy George and Culture Club have rerecorded their chart-topping hit, “Karma Chameleon,” using AI to recreate the vocal characteristics of the original 1983 recording. Alongside digital formats, the release will be available on vinyl in red, gold and green, the colors referenced in the song, featuring reimagined cover art. The rerecord marks the launch of Artist Included, a music technology company co-founded by Boy George’s manager, Paul Kemsley, and entertainment attorney and film producer Jeremy Rosen. Boy George serves as creative director.
Asked why he decided to recreate the song, Boy George has a simple answer: “Control!,” he tells Rolling Stone. “Having some say over where it goes. ‘Karma Chameleon’ is a secret weapon. It’s a song you starve the audience for because they want to hear it, and live, it’s always been a real pleasure to sing it. But in terms of what it does commercially, it’s like having something really powerful with your name on it, and you have no say about where it goes.”
The idea for the rerecord was prompted by a commercial sync license for “Karma Chameleon” involving Richard Branson for Virgin Voyages. Culture Club signed to Branson’s Virgin Records in 1982, and Boy George has maintained a close relationship with the entrepreneur ever since. According to Kemsley, Branson paid approximately $4 million for the deal ($2 million of which went to the master recording rights holders), while Boy George received only an appearance fee because he has never owned the masters for his biggest song.
“Karma’s a bitch,” Boy George states. “When we wrote that song, we weren’t looking 40 years ahead. We weren’t thinking of longevity. That song, because of the context of when it was recorded, the social feeling has stayed with people. It’s become part of people’s lives. Having control over it again, to a certain extent, is very exciting.”
The rerecord has a warmer vocal tone and sits slightly lower in the mix than the original, but is faithful enough to it that it plays like a remaster. The rerecording was produced by JJ Blair and Culture Club’s guitarist Roy Hay with additional production by song’s original producer, Steve Levine. Prior to the session, the AI was trained using archival demos licensed from Levine who had preserved them for decades. The instrumentation was newly recorded by Hay, Culture Club bassist Mikey Craig and session musicians. Only the vocal performance is AI-assisted.
“When I went into the studio to record it, I was like a pub singer imitating myself,” says Boy George. “You listen to where you pace things [sings the first line of ‘Karma Chameleon’]. You listen to where you put the voice: in your nose or your throat or chest. What you do instinctively as a 22-year-old, you don’t do as a 40-year-old or a 65-year-old. There’s a clipped way of singing it, which you forget through playing it live so many times. It was very European-sounding and youthful. I’ve taken it somewhere much more blues-y over the years, dragging out the notes. It’s about the nuance. When you sing something live over 40 years, it changes shape. It’s interesting to take it back to the original recording and recapture that feeling.”
Getting close to the original vocal is a hurdle for most musicians whose voices change over time. It took 18 months for Artist Included’s AI to work out the kinks. In the first iteration, Boy George sounded like “Pinky and Perky, two pigs on helium in a cartoon,” says Kemsley, referring to a children’s television series where the titular characters sing in high-pitched, fast-paced voices. The technology is now refined, and the plan is to rerecord Culture Club’s and Boy George’s entire back catalogs. Kemsley claims this will take two weeks, or as long as it takes Boy George to sing every song.
“I was a naysayer,” admits Boy George. “I was like, ‘This will never work.’ But I actually prefer this version [of ‘Karma Chameleon’]. For me, as the person that sang it originally, and re-sang it, what I love about this version, it has the sound of that time, but the warmth and experience and integrity of everything I’ve learned in my life.”
Kemsley, who has managed Boy George since 2014, frames the project as an attempt to rebalance longstanding industry economics. “This record has been making millions of dollars for [almost] 45 years, and George hasn’t,” says Kemsley. “The whole thing seems terribly unjust. You sign your life away at the age of 22, then have to wait 35 years to get the reversions, but you still don’t get any master recording income. Over the years, bands try to get their masters back and they never get them, with the major labels claiming they are work-for-hire.”
To put this in context, a record company often owns or controls master recording rights, a term stipulated when it signs an artist. That covers the music; the lyrics and composition are an entirely separate right known as publishing, which, by contrast, follows the composition, and therefore the song through every new recording. As a result, rerecords create a new master recording, and can benefit publishing by re-engaging the artist and generating renewed interest in the underlying work.
When it comes to rerecords, many artists are restricted to a certain length of time during which they are forbidden from releasing a new, faithful version to the original. Longstanding artists sometimes use Section 203 of the U.S. Copyright Act to reclaim rights to their masters after 35 years. They are rarely successful, as record companies often argue the masters were created as work made for hire.
The way Artist Included is structured, the artist receives the lion’s share of revenue. “The industry I was in no longer exists,” Boy George points out. “Artists like me are expected to carry on following that model. I haven’t done that for years. I used to say I’m the only person who realizes the ‘80s are over. You want to keep the spirit of that moment to some extent, but you move on. AI is not going anywhere, so having that conversation is exciting. And being ahead of the game in terms of how people use it, is also quite exciting for me.”
Considering Culture Club’s acrimonious split with their former drummer, Jon Moss, which resulted in a hefty settlement, rerecords of their songs also have the benefit of bypassing the need for his approval to use the original master recordings, which have four-way songwriting credit between its members.
“He still gets something from it,” clarifies Boy George. “Jon is a part of what we did [originally as a band].” But Kemsley is quick to point out that Moss is not a part of what they’re doing now with the rerecords, and is not entitled to any percentage of it. The band will see an increase in publishing, and as a credited songwriter, Moss will continue to receive publishing income, while the new master revenues do not involve him.
The next song queued up for rerecord is another signature Culture Club hit, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,” and Artist Included’s AI is primed, having retained Boy George’s voice for training purposes. The company has also been in conversations with publishing companies and other artists, mainly from the Eighties and Nineties, though no names are being disclosed yet. Kemsley says the conversations have not been a hard sell.
“People will react to what they see and hear,” says Boy George. “It’s much more powerful when people see it released and see what can happen.”
Kemsley notes Boy George turns 65 the day before the release of the new “Karma Chameleon,” which is the retirement age in the UK. “We’re not retiring,” Kemsley clarifies. “Far from it. We’re going back to the beginning, and we’re going to do it all again. We’re going to change the way revenue flows through to the artist. And we’re going to have some real fun with it.”