Location: London, England
Musical career: Drummer for Britpop giants Blur, ’90s-’00s
Office(s) held: In 2007, Rowntree ran for and lost a Westminster council seat, representing the Labour Party, in his Marylebone High Street ward.
Political stance: Rowntree
told
Time Out during that election, “What I do believe in is Labour core values: social justice, richer people in society helping the poorer people in society, again all the nerdy stuff to do with what it means to be a socialist rings true for me.
The road to office: “There’s no single lightning flash of inspiration that led me to do this,” Rowntree told
Time Out. “I joined Labour five years ago and started turning up to local meetings. If you’re under 60 and turn up to meetings for your local Labour Party, they’ll elect you as a candidate. Nobody else came forward, so I was elected.”
Message in the music? Not really—Blur singer-songwriter Damon Albarn is famously skeptical of politics.
Location: Medina, Texas
Musical career: Satirical country singer-songwriter, ’70s-present
Office(s) held: An unsuccessful—but widely publicized—run for governor of Texas in 2006.
Political stance: Friedman ran in 2006 as a Republican, albeit an unorthodox one, having
said in 2005, “I support gay marriage because I believe they have [the] right to be just as miserable as the rest of us!” Friedman later said that if he ran again, it would be as a Democrat.
The road to office: Friedman had been writing a column for
Texas Monthly when he decided, two years before, to run for governor during the 2006 election. “The enemy is the whole system, the whole paper, plastic, same old, politics as usual,” he
said. “If you're tired of that, you vote for Kinky.” Wrestler/actor-turned-Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura campaigned on his behalf, and Friedman ran under the memorable slogan, “How hard can it be?” With less than 13 percent of the vote, he never found out.
Message in the music? Friedman’s always taken a cockeyed view of social mores in songs such as “Asshole From El Paso,” his tongue-in-cheek answer to Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee,” and “They Don’t Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore.”
Location: Palm Springs, California
Musical career: Songwriter, record producer, recording artist as half of
Sonny & Cher ("I Got You Babe")
Office(s) held: Mayor of Palm Springs, CA, 1988-92; House of Representatives (California's 44th district), 1994-98
Political stance: Republican. Ten months after his death in a skiing accident in January 1998, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, named in memory of the songwriter who'd fervently championed it.
The road to office: Sonny decided to run for mayor of Palm Springs in 1988 after slogging through red tape for a business venture—and won.
Message in the music? Sonny & Cher may have adapted the trappings of mid-'60s folk rock, but the politics? Not so much.
Location: Dover Plains, New York
Musical career: Guitarist and songwriter,
Orleans ("Still the One")
Office(s) held: U.S. House of Representatives, 2007-present (represents New York's 19th District)
Political stance: Progressive Democrat—Hall is pro sustainable energy, middle-class tax relief, and drug reform.
The road to office: Hall was an anti-nuclear power activist in the late '70s, co-founding MUSE (Musicians United for Safe Energy) and helping put on the No Nukes concert. In 1989 he won a seat in the Ulster County Legislature, and later became president of the Saugerties Board of Education.
Message in the music? Not really—Orleans' hits were pretty typical boy-girl stuff. Nevertheless, Hall got pretty cheesed off when John McCain used "Still the One" as his victory song during the New Hampshire primary in 2008,
requesting that McCain stop
Location: Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
Musical career:
Solo artist, 1965-present ("Expresso 2222")
Office(s) held: Brazilian Minister of Culture, 2003-2008
Political stance: Gil is a member of the Green Party and, naturally for a successful musician, has a special interest in intellectual property law. "I think we are moving rapidly toward the obsolescence and eventual disappearance of a single traditional model and its replacement by others that are hybrids," he
told The New York Times in 2007. "My personal view is that digital culture brings with it a new idea of intellectual property, and that this new culture of sharing can and should inform government policies."
The road to office: Gil's career has always had a political dimension. In 1969, along with colleague Caetano Veloso, Gil was first arrested by the Brazilian military government, and then extradited to London, for no given reason. (Translation: their music was too subversive.) Nearly 20 years later, in 1988, Gil was elected to the Salvador city council, later working as an environmental activist and, in 2001, becoming a U.N. ambassador.
Message in the music? Gil is a master musical syncretist—bringing everything from rock to reggae to disco into Brazilian pop—and approached his job similarly,
saying in his inauguration speech in 2003, "We want to do an anthropological massage into the body of the ministry. Like oxygenating the areas which are dormant."
Location: Panama City, Panama
Musical career: Salsa giant, first as
singer for Willie Colon's band and then as a solo star
beginning in the '80s
Office(s) held: Panamanian Minister of Tourism, 2004-2009
Political stance: Liberal
The road to office: Blades got his international law degree from Harvard Law School in 1985, at his peak of musical popularity, and in 1994 ran for president of Panama (his party was Movimiento Papa Egoró, founded by Blades). He lost, but captured 18 percent of the vote.
Message in the music? Blades has consistently written and performed politically themed material, among many other things.
Location: Sydney, Australia
Musical career: Lead singer for activist rockers Midnight Oil from the '70s through the '90s
Office(s) held: Member of Australia's House of Representatives, 2004-present; Minister for the Environment Protection, Heritage and the Arts, 2007-present
Political stance: Labour Party
The road to office: Garrett was a committed activist during the entirety of Midnight Oil's existence. He ran for senate in 1984 and lost.
Message in the music? As
Garrett's personal Web page puts it, "The 'Oils' were renowned for their fierce independent stance and active support of a range of contemporary concerns including the plight of homeless youth, indigenous people's rights and protection of the environment."
Midnight Oil's big U.S. hit, 1988's "Beds Are Burning," implored the Australian government to restore land to the nation's indigenous population.
Location: Wahkiakum County, Washington
Musical career: Bassist for Nirvana; later played with Sweet 75 and Flipper
Office(s) held: None to date, though he founded the political action committee JAMPAC in 1995 and had been a visible activist since his Nirvana days
Political stance: A former Democrat, Novoselic now leans Libertarian. He donated to Ron Paul's 2008 presidential run and just last week declared his backing for no-party candidate
Schalk Leonard in his blog for Seattle Weekly.
The road to office: In 2004, Novoselic contemplated running for lieutenant governor of Washington state as a Democrat, but ultimately decided against it.
Message in the music? We still can't figure out half the Nirvana lyrics.
