Within hours of President Biden’s announcement that he would not seek re-election and would instead endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, social media exploded with support from the pop music world.
As concerns about Mr. Biden’s electability have accelerated in recent months, Ms. Harris, who is 59, with a big, diverse family, seems to have energized digitally engaged voters in a way that Mr. Biden did not.
Fans quickly started posting remixes on TikTok that incorporated audio from Ms. Harris’s speeches, along with her laugh, into songs by Charli XCX, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Chappell Roan, Mitski and Kim Petras.
THE VIRAL KAMALA’S SPEECH
The snippet most often used is from a speech Ms. Harris gave in May 2023. She was addressing the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics and recalled an adage from her mother: “She would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’”
After pausing to laugh, Ms. Harris continued: ‘You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.’ (The combination of a coconut emoji and a palm tree emoji has become shorthand to refer to Ms. Harris’s campaign.)
Charli XCX, in a nod to her latest album, ‘Brat’ — and its signature green album cover that has become a Gen Z emblem of the summer — set the tone (literally) Sunday night by posting: ‘kamala IS brat.’
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On X, formerly Twitter, the official Harris campaign account updated its header to match the color and typography of the album.
Katy Perry, whose song Roar featured prominently in Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016, posted a montage of videos of Ms. Harris soundtracked by a remix that integrated the ‘coconut’ quotation and clips of Ms. Harris laughing into Ms. Perry’s new single Woman’s World. ‘It’s a woman’s world, and you’re lucky to be living in it,’ Ms. Perry sings.
On Sunday, Cardi B reposted a selfie video recorded on June 30, in which she says, in an extended and profane message, that Ms. Harris should have been the Democratic nominee all along.
‘Been told y’all Kamala should’ve been the 2024 candidate,’ she wrote in the caption. ‘Y’all be trying to play the Bronx education, baby this what I do!!!’
And Tina Knowles, mother of Beyoncé and Solange, posted a photo of her and Ms. Harris with a caption that began: ‘New, youthful, sharp, energy!!!!’
