America needs more D’Angelos

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The news, in brief …

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• “Is that Charlie?”: Trump questions pacifist Kirk characterization at Medal of Freedom ceremony

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• John Oliver slams CBS for putting Bari Weiss in charge

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• Tennessee’s last House Democrat, facing progressive challenger, vows to fight

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Make me smarter …

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Put it on the line …

“Revivalist” is one of the most insulting tags you can give a working musician. 

It might be a useful term for choice-burdened listeners, who can read the word and know instantly that they’re going to hear a faithful take on a forgotten sound. But to the creative forces behind the music, it has to feel like a failure. People have listened to your music and the most pressing thing they can say about it is “We’ve heard this before.” Like the “local music” designation found in record shops, revivalist is a label that melts away with success. Superstars don’t sound like anybody but themselves. 

D’Angelo may have played in the sandbox of ‘70s soul and funk, but he was anything but a revivalist. The R&B icon, who died Tuesday at the age of 51, took the lush bedroom jams canonized by legions of Quiet Storm DJs and recast them in turn-of-the-millennium chrome. 

The face of the neo-soul movement presented a futurist’s view of the recent past, doing interesting things with time in both the metaphorical and literal sense. The rhythm section on his opus “Voodoo” clattered and sputtered like a pre-oil-bust land yacht, building anticipation by waiting until the last possible microsecond to hit the next beat. D’Angelo’s sublime vocals luxuriated in that irregular negative space, cruising along in a talk-sing monotone to set up a startling dive into a growl or a jaw-dropping ascent into a gorgeous falsetto. This student of R&B history never seemed to sweat as he pointed out a new, exciting way forward for the most American genre of music while still honoring what came before. 

Popular art that executes on the level of “Voodoo” is in short supply in any era, but the cupboard feels particularly bare as we muscle our way through Trump 2.0. Unfettered tech giants and rapidly consolidating media companies have seemingly gone to war with the concept of art, pumping billions into AI-generated slop made for numbers-goosing bots. Uninspired retreads and cash-grab IPs junk up movie theater release schedules and streaming service carousels. Over it all, the political project of the president and his party aims to revive the corpse of American mid-century prosperity via selectively applied racism and wantonly applied cruelty. The promise to “Make America Great Again” provides no vision of the country’s future that isn’t a misremembered version of its past. President Trump’s true believers clap along to the cover band on the ones and threes. 

To undo the damage of the Trump years, we’re going to need a thinker like D’Angelo. It’s not enough to set everything back as it was. A post-Trump America will need to draw from the framework that made the country great while testing out novel legal theories and setting new expectations for the American public. Trump ran roughshod over the Constitution and revealed how much of our system is held up by gentlemen’s agreements and unwritten norms. It will take a true visionary, someone with a deep knowledge of the past and an uncompromising vision of the future, to set that right.

What do you think? Is there anyone on the horizon who could lead a movement to undo the Trump years? Who’s the most visionary politician you can think of? On a lighter note, what’s your favorite D’Angelo song? (Mine’s “Send It On.”) Tap the speech bubble icon up top to leave a comment!

Before you go …

Donald Trump’s new “American Midnight” is upon us

Historian Adam Hochschild sees echoes of post–World War I repression today. Read more.

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