Helter Skelter or All Together Now: Beatles songs associated with the last 2 U.S. presidents. Ger Rijkers Science Department, University College Roosevelt, P.O. Box 94, Middelburg, The Netherlands Microvida Laboratory for Medical Microbiology and Immunology, St Elizabeth Hospital, Tilburg, The Netherlands [email protected]
It is well known that in the biomedical sciences, researchers try to include the title of a popular pop song into the title of their scientific publications. Songs written and performed by The Beatles and by Bob Dylan stand out. The number 1 hits in biomedical publications are “The long and winding road” as Beatles song and “The times they are a changing” for Bob Dylan [1,2]. The question would be whether these 2 songs would also be on top of the charts in non-scientific publications, in particular in newspaper and magazine articles. News articles were searched for The Beatles or Bob Dylan song titles using the Nexis Uni search function HLEAD (https//advance.lexis.com/nexis-uni). The HLEAD filter restricts the results to the title and the first paragraph of a news article. Results were next filtered for “People”, which allowed to assign song titles to persons, and thus also to US presidents. Campaign songs were excluded, because they could have biased the outcome of this analysis: The campaign playlist of Donald Trump included 2 Beatles songs: Hey Jude and Revolution [3] while Obama’s playlist didn’t contain any Beatles song [4]. A number of Beatles song titles had to be excluded because the title consists of a single word (such as “Help”) or is identical to a more general expression such as “Come together” (both Trump and Obama >800 news items) and ‘Let it be” (both Trump and Obama >900 news items).
With above methodology and restriction, overall more Beatles song titles in news items were associated with Donald Trump (832) than with Barack Obama (626). Whether or not this difference is significant, depends on the total number of news items published on these 2 presidents. As of September 24, 2020, the Nexis database contains 2,98 million news items on president Obama and 2,90 million on president Trump. So with statistical significance it can be concluded that Donald Trump more is a Beatles man than Barrack Obama (p <0.05), at least in the mind of journalists (Figure 1). When the association with individual Beatles songs is analyzed, we reach a more differential conclusion. The biggest and most significant difference between Donald Trump and Barrack Obama is for the song “Helter Skelter” (279 and 74 news items, respectively) (Figure 1). This song title also is associated with U.S. presidents from a more distant past such as George W Bush (55 times), John F Kennedy (39), Bill Clinton (28), Richard Nixon (28), Ronald Reagan (24). Barrack Obama outcompetes Donald Trump for “Altogether Now” (101 and 7465 news items, respectively). The only other Beatles song where Obama has a significant advantage over Trump is “Ticket to Ride” (46 and 16, respectively). A limitation of this study is that the context of a particular song title with a given president was not taken into account. As an example one news article that came up with the Beatles song “I, me, my” linked to Obama. This article which appeared in the US News and World Report magazine of September 8 2008 was on a speech given by Republican nominee for presidency John McCain [5]. The journalist, John Aloysius Farrell, noted that McCain in his 50 minutes speech used the words “I”, “Me” “Mine” over 200 times, twice as many references to “personal self-greatness” as Obama had used during a similar speech in Denver. A second and final example is about the association of “Helter Skelter” with Trump. In a contribution of Bob Brigham to Salon.com entitled “Jared Kushner revealed as brains behind Donald Trump's "half-baked" coronavirus response” and dated March 14, 2020, he writes: “Kushner’s . . crisis management process . . . and helter-skelter as the chaotic early days of Trump's presidency” (quotation abbreviated for space reason) [6]. This analysis is restricted to original Beatles compositions and therefore cover versions are excluded. It is unfortunate that for this reason the song “Bad boy” had to be excluded. The Beatles recorded “Bad Boy” in 1965 but it has been written and recorded by Larry Williams in 1958. For the record: “Bad Boy” in news reports is associated 548 times with Donald Trump, while Barrack Obama is not listed. It can be concluded that, like scientists, also journalists refer to song titles of the Beatles in their publications. Even in news about US presidents, Beatles song titles are included. The context in which “Helter Skelter” is associated with Donald Trump would ask for a deeper investigation.
References 1. Rijkers G, Luscombe A, Sloof C. Scientists Gaining Inspiration from Bob Dylan and the Beatles Song Titles: What Goes on in Biomedical Literature. Social Science Research Network SSRN October 9, 2017, http://dx.doi.org/ 10.2139/ssrn.3050226 2. Luscombe A, Rijkers G, Sloof C. Tell me Why Bob Dylan and the Beatles Song Titles are used in biomedical literature. Webology 2017; 14(2): 78- 89. https://www.webology.org/2017/v14n2/a159.pdf 3. President Donald Trump 2020 — Keep America Great Rally Songs. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7673XgxqA16yhdVEFvpYyh Assessed October 3, 2020 4. Barrack Obama Campaign Playlist. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Nrnagn9zoinTAikkOOP0H Assessed October 3, 2020 5. Farell JA. McCain Speech: I, Me, Mine. US News and World Report Sep 5, 2008. https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/john-farrell/2008/09/05/mccain- speech-i-me-mine Assessed October 3, 2020 6. Brigham B. Jared Kushner revealed as brains behind Donald Trump's "half-baked" coronavirus response. Salon.com 2020. https://www.salon.com/2020/03/14/jared-kushner-revealed-as-brains- behind-donald-trumps-half-baked-coronavirus-response_partner/ Assessed October 3, 2020 Figure 1. The Presidents Top 10 Beatles Songs.