Emotional Governance Through Sound: Populism and Music in the Trump Era

This study examines the emotional architecture of Donald Trump’s campaign playlists as tools of populist political communication. By combining computational analysis of Spotify audio features with interpretive frameworks from musicology, political theory, and affect studies, it reveals how sound is strategically employed to orchestrate collective sentiment, reinforce ideological boundaries, and cultivate emotional identification among supporters. The analysis of 221 songs used in rallies from 2015 to 2024 shows a systematic dominance of high-energy emotional categories—particularly ‘Excited’ and ‘Angry’—which mirror Trump’s populist performance style and rhetorical polarisation. The playlists are not merely musical accompaniments but affective scripts, guiding emotional response through genre-coded symbols, temporal nostalgia, and performative participation. Music operates here as a modality of soft power: shaping moods, staging grievance, and embedding political identity in sound. The findings contribute to understanding how affective governance and emotional mobilisation are amplified through sonic infrastructures in contemporary populist movements.