Sounding the Vote: A Review of <i>Trax on the Trail</i>

“Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music.” While perusing videos from Donald Trump’s October 29 town hall meeting in Oaks, Pennsylvania, I watched in utter disbelief as the event transformed into an impromptu listening party. For forty minutes, Trump alternately swayed, danced, teetered, and punched the air to a wide-ranging Spotify playlist that included “Memory” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, “Con te partiró” sung by Andrea Bocelli, and, of course, the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.”—a Trump rally staple. Watching this spectacle, I experienced a sense of both complete bafflement and paralyzing horror.From pop icon Charli XCX’s viral tweet asserting that “kamala IS brat” to Trump’s aforementioned town hall, music and sounds frequently took center stage throughout the 2024 presidential election. For members of the general public, sonic moments can perhaps feel like little more than background noise amid a whirlwind of campaign ads, sound bites, TikTok videos, memes, and more. But musicologist Dana Gorzelany-Mostak understands the importance of documenting these ephemeral sounds and creating a record that allows for reflection and analysis among varied audiences. In 2015, she launched Trax on the Trail (https://www.traxonthetrail.com/), a project and online database that aims to “promote a more critical evaluation of how music and sound shape the public’s perceptions of presidential candidates.”1By tracking and cataloging the soundscapes of US presidential campaigns, Trax occupies a unique space at the intersection of musicology, political science, media studies, and the digital humanities, offering a nuanced exploration of how sound and music affect political identities, influence public opinion, foster connections between candidates and voters, and provide the foundation for building coalitions. The site is supported by a forty-person team from the US and Canada that includes professors, subject matter experts, and students from fields spanning political science, musicology, sociology, history, communications, and media studies. The Trax team also worked with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to develop a course unit focused on the relationship between rock music and presidential politics, in addition to collaborating with WRGC 88.3 radio to create a podcast series. Trax on the Trail has been cited by major media outlets such as the BBC, The Guardian, Slate, and the Boston Herald. With a mission to foster media literacy and critical listening, the scope of Trax extends beyond music analysis to encompass broader social and political themes, making it a unique tool for researchers, educators, journalists, and more.Trax on the Trail’s interactive website is divided into several sections:Additionally, the website features biographies of Trax’s staff and contributors, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.Trax on the Trail’s broad appeal constitutes one of its greatest strengths. Researchers, journalists, and educators alike have lauded the database as a powerful tool for live, ongoing analysis. One journalist from CNN even commented, “we’re all nerding out over your database.”2 This highlights how Trax on the Trail has captured the attention of individuals across multiple fields, fostering relationships between academia and members of the wider public.Trax’s resources also provide ways for students to connect music history to current events and trends. Through the lesson plans Trax provides, educators can guide learners to investigate questions of authenticity, manipulation, and propaganda, helping students to develop strong analytical skills. For example, the lesson plan “Campaign Music 101 in the Music History Classroom” explores how music, especially walk-on songs and parodies, shapes presidential candidates’ public personas. It includes two activities: one analyzing the emotional impact of walk-on music used in the 2016 conventions and another engaging with political parody songs. This helps students understand how music influences voter perceptions and constructs political identities while fostering critical engagement with the role of sound in political campaigns. Trax’s commitment to student involvement is another noteworthy feature of the project. Based at Georgia College, students involved with the Trax on the Trail research project are actively engaged in collecting, cataloging, and analyzing music data. In addition to providing students with hands-on experiences with interdisciplinary research, Trax illustrates just how much academic projects can engage with and benefit from students’ contributions and perspectives.For educators and students looking for timely insights into music and sounds from the 2024 presidential campaign, however, Trax only provides limited resources. While the database coverage of this period is robust, the accompanying educational content is lacking in ways that stand out by comparison with the coverage of previous campaigns. In their article “Trax on the Trail in the Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts Classroom,” Laura Moore Pruett and Anne Boxberger Flaherty praise Trax’s ability to connect current political events with scholarly commentary in the leadup to the 2016 presidential campaign. They note:According to Pruett and Flaherty, the timeliness of the blog posts added a powerful sense of exigency to course discussions, inspiring students to become more informed about—and perhaps invested in—current political events. Since the newest Trax blog was posted on October 25, 2020, however, students enrolled in the course during the 2024 election cycle did not have access to an experience like the one that so energized Pruett and Flaherty’s classroom. The absence of recent blog posts is also regrettable since they illuminate important historical and cultural contexts that can help readers understand the subtle yet influential role that music plays in shaping political narratives. That said, the bibliography includes a number of up-to-date resources that could serve as a springboard for discussion and analysis. The most recent, Justin Patch’s book, The Art of Populism in US Politics: Pro-Trump DIY Popular Culture, was published in 2025.While Trax’s resources for those studying the 2024 election may be more limited, the project remains valuable for those seeking to understand the roles of music and sound in political campaigns. It fosters collaboration across disciplines, inviting students and faculty from fields like political science, history, and sociology to contribute to the project’s analysis and research. The educational materials, including essays, podcasts, and a bibliography on campaign music, deepen the public’s understanding of how music and sound influence today’s political landscape.As Gorzelany-Mostak notes, political campaigns are about creating a “multisensory experience,” and Trax on the Trail offers a platform for reflecting on how music and sound impact that experience. The project’s contribution to both scholarly research and public understanding underscores its importance as a tool for critical analysis in contemporary political discourse. Trax on the Trail not only offers a scholarly framework for understanding campaign music but also invites students to critically engage with the sounds of their time and consider how they may be used to redirect political futures.