What was JFK’s favourite song?
Most government officials don’t really look like the laid-back sort. As much as anyone might like to get out and loosen up after work, it’s a little bit harder to do that when people are fixated on your every move and wondering if you have what it takes to be a leader based on whether you signed the right legal documents or kissed enough babies to get their goodwill. But John F Kennedy played the role of being calm and collected beautifully, and his musical taste was the perfect reflection of what he was all about.
Compared to every other President who had come before him, there was reason to believe that there was a bit of hope in America when Kennedy was elected. Being one of the youngest presidents ever to take office, he seemed like the kind of person who could relate to both sides of the aisle without having to punch below the belt or become undignified. There’s a joke in there about modern politicians taking notes, but is it really much of a joke anymore?
Outside of his diplomatic interactions with both political parties, Kennedy knew how to have fun. Discounting some of the dirty escapades that he may or may not have gotten into behind closed doors, Kennedy was the kind of President who could actually have fun when he wanted, and whenever he threw on music at a party, ‘September Song’ by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson.
At the same time, this kind of song isn’t necessarily a ragre. You have to remember this was pre-rock and roll, so anything that had a decent beat was considered intense by most conservative household standards. But there’s something about ‘September Song’ that actually feels a lot more…for lack of a better term, “homey”.
Written like your typical Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra ballad, Kennedy always gravitated to the version that Walter Huston made in the 1930s, featuring him almost talk-singing most of the track and dipping in and out of his normal singing register. Since Kennedy was known to sing this song at parties, it actually fits shockingly well with his voice, considering the start-stop demeanour of the lyrics is the same thing that people do when they want to impersonate the President.
If you look at the lyrics in regards to what happened later, it’s hard to think of the song as a little bit foreboding if you put Kennedy on top of it. There are only a few stanzas of lyrics where Huston talks about the years continuing to grow darker starting in September, and since Kennedy would meet his untimely end in November of 1963, America was about to enter one of its darkest periods.
Still, that was never what Weill and Anderson meant when they wrote ‘September Song’. This was still about having fun as the seasons changed, and if you look at it in the context before Kennedy’s death, this feels like the little shred of innocence that America had before World War II, The Cuban Missile Crisis, and pretty much everything else that it’s seen since.
