Will Kamala Harris make history as the President with the coolest musical taste?

Vice President, what did you get?

That question was posed to Kamala Harris by the Washington press corps last year when the VP emerged from a shopping trip to D.C.’s Home Rule Records (one of the city’s Black-owned record stores) during Small Business Week.

Now that President Biden has exited the race and Harris has moved to the top of the Democratic ticket, that clip has gone viral and spawned a Kamala Holding Vinyls meme generator that allows you to pretend the presumptive nominee has purchased an LP by your favorite artist. (Try it, it’s fun.)

So no, this photo of Harris holding a copy of Kids In Philly, the scrappy 2000 classic by South Philly rock and roll band Marah, isn’t real. Nor are the one of the veep with LPs by the Replacements, Bay City Rollers or Charli XCX (though the Harris campaign has embraced the British singer’s Brat summer).

But never mind the fake LPs. The trio of albums Harris actually bought last May — further exemplified by her music choices circulating on social media — are enough to prompt the question: If elected, would Harris serve as the President with the coolest musical taste ever?

“Do you know music?,” she asks the gathered journalists. The LP she then holds up is a start at making that argument: It’s Let My Children Hear Music, the 1972 album by bassist and composer Charles Mingus, whom Harris rightly describes as “one of the greatest jazz performers ever.”

Her other crate digging finds were vibraphonist Roy Ayers’ 1975 Everybody Loves Sunshine, which she calls “one of my favorite albums of all time.” And she also grabbed Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s 1969 recording of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Not a bad haul. Those selections show Harris to be a jazz aficionado, but a video from a Grand Rapids, Mich. shopping trip to Della Soul Records in February demonstrates that she’s also down with the funk. And up with the down stroke. Harris came out of the store with a Funko Pop! doll depicting Parliament-Funkadelic founder George Clinton, while also scoring an unnamed Miles Davis album.

“Do you know P-Funk?,” she asked assembled media members.

Silence. (Sadly.)

“No? OK, well there are lessons to be taught,” she says, perhaps readying herself for a role as musical educator in chief.

“Does everybody know who Bootsy Collins is? Ok, there’s some education to be done, I can see that.”

Harris’ fandom is adding buzz to her candidacy in its early days.

While a photo from Harris’ undergraduate years at Howard University have elicited comments like “Why does young Kamala Harris look like she’s about to drop the hottest album of 1982?”, Philly acts Pink and Questlove have proclaimed allegiance.

Beyoncé, too, has given Harris the thumbs up to use “Freedom,” the rousing track feat. Kendrick Lamar from her 2016 Lemonade as her campaign theme song. No doubt it will be heard when Harris appear in Philadelphia next Tuesday.

Who would be Harris’ competition for most musically with-it President ever?

Richard Nixon played piano and violin. Jimmy Carter and his wife Roslyn were friends with Willie Nelson. Bill Clinton played sax on the Arsenio Hall Show. George W. Bush loved ZZ Top. And among former presidential hopefuls, Hillary Clinton gets points for being the teenage president of the Fabian fan club, but loses them for using Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” as her 2016 anthem.

Harris’ main rival for best music fan-in-chief would, of course, be President Barack Obama, who made his discerning taste part of his brand.

In 2015, Obama began posting eclectic summer playlists of his favorite songs. That first year, he gave Philly’s Low Cut Connie a major career boost by including the Adam Weiner-led band’s “Boozophilia.”

Obama’s ongoing bromance with Bruce Springsteen spawned the Renegades podcast in 2021. His book and movie and TV recs are always thoughtful, but his music choices sometimes feel focus-grouped, as if designed to impress music critics (like me). Does he really listen to Faye Webster, Indigo De Souza, and Stormzy?

What about President Donald Trump? In her statement posted on X during the Republican Convention National Convention, Melania Trump talked about her husband’s “passion — his laughter, love of music, and inspiration.”

Music did play a big role at the RNC. The former President made an entrance to James Brown’s “It’s A Man’s, Man’s Man’s World,” and sat next to “Try That In a Small Town” country singer Jason Aldean. Kid Rock performed. Lee Greenwood sang “God Bless the U.S.A.”

But Trump has often found himself in conflict with the bands whose make the music played at his rallies.

Acts including Adele, Elton John and the Village People have voiced disapproval at their songs being used at Trump rallies, just as Tom Petty, Sinead O’Connor, and John Mellencamp have objected to Republican candidates using their music in the past. Trump, however, has denied cease-and-desist requests. That’s allowed, since most venues that host political rallies have licenses to play any music they want, and artists have no real power to stop them.

The candidate on the Republican ticket who appears to have the most active musical life is vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. That’s not surprising since, at 39, he’s half Trump’s age, and also 20 years younger than Harris.

In a post headlined “I Regret To Inform You That JD Vance’s Spotify Completely Slaps,” Slate shone light on public playlists that appear to have been curated by the Hillbilly Elegy author, though the campaign hasn’t confirmed that.

The playlists range from Americana artists like Alison Krauss and Kacey Musgraves to old school soul and indie rock. Vance is apparently a fan of Death Cab For Cutie and Sufjan Stevens, and may also be a Belieber: one playlist that features the Black Keys and Florence & the Machine includes Justin Bieber’s “One Time.”

The only playlist on the official Vice President Kamala Harris Spotify page is “My Travels: Ghana, Tanzania, & Zambia.” Coordinated with a 2023 trip to those countries, it includes U.S.-based artists like Ghanaian American songwriter Moses Sumney and African acts such as Chile One Mr Zambia.

The Harris campaign continues to reach beyond the obvious with its use of breakout artist Chappell Roan’s “Femeninomenon” to soundtrack a campaign TikTok video.

The Kamala Harris Campaign Playlist is a crowdsourced list of songs played at her events. It sounds like a party: Sister Nancy’s “Bam Bam,” Prince’s “Kiss,” P-Funk’s “One Nation Under A Groove,” and plenty of Stevie Wonder, who Harris told MSNBC’s Ari Melber in 2019 is her all time fave, along with Collins.

Philly is represented on the playlist with Jazmine Sullivan’s “If You Dare,” and The Hamilton Mixtape remix of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “My Shot” with the Roots, with whom she appeared on a Tonight Show ‘Slow Jam The News’ segment in 2020.

“I’m unapologetic, I’m on my calisthenics,” Black Thought raps, “If I’ve given it all I got I cannot regret it, my point of destination is different than where I was headed, cause I’ma shoot for the stars to get it.”

Now that would make for a fitting fight song for a candidate striving to become the first woman President in American history.