A convention official speaking to The Hollywood Reporter blamed it all on the wild applause the speakers earlier in the night garnered from the audience.
James Taylor was bumped at the DNC last night, and while reports emerged that speeches ran long and there was just no room for the aging folkster, it almost seemed intentional, a message that the old guard, their leaders in both politics and culture, were out for good.
"Veteran singer-songwriter James Taylor, who was slated to perform, got bumped for time as the night ran long. We’ll never know for certain whether he would have matched Kid Rock’s energy," NPR writes, referencing the energy of the RNC and the performers that graced that stage.
Taylor's only performance on the Chicago stage on Monday was during a sound check, where he played his iconic "You've Got a Friend." It was scheduled to be sung between speeches given by Biden's daughter Ashley and wife Jill in the lead up to Biden's exit speech. It would have been a soft reminder that Biden, the elder statesman, was leaving the party he'd been part of for his enture career, stretching back to the 1970s and Taylor's own heyday, and led for the past four years.
The Hollywood Reporter said that Taylor was "scrapped as organizers grappled with scheduling problems that pushed President Joe Biden‘s speech outside primetime." But wasn't that exactly the goal? Biden was on so late many viewers at home had likely already headed off to bed by the time he stepped on stage, and Taylor was off the schedule entirely.
A convention official speaking to The Hollywood Reporter blamed it all on the wild applause the speakers earlier in the night garnered from the audience. "Because of the raucous applause interrupting speaker after speaker, we ultimately skipped elements of our program to ensure we could get to President Biden as quickly as possible so that he could speak directly to the American people. We are proud of the electric atmosphere in our convention hall and proud that our convention is showcasing the broad and diverse coalition behind the Harris-Walz ticket throughout the week on and off the stage," the convention official said.
The musical acts that were featured included Mickey Guyton, who sang her single All American, and Jason Isbell, who filled that singer-songwriter ticket that once belonged to Taylor. The opening night of the convention, which was designated by organizers with the theme For the People, was about removing the old and ushering in the new. Those who repped for the new brand of the Democrat Party were AOC, Jasmine Crocket, and others who blasted Trump and praised Kamala for her unspecified vision of the future.
But it was also a way to say "don't let the door hit you on the way out" to the former leaders of the Democrat Party, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and even Reverand Jesse Jackson, who was wheeled out on stage for a few moments just for the applause, and wheeled off again. Bumping James Taylor, bumping his song, his legacy, was to bump the legacy of the boomer generation, the legacy of the hippies, the yuppies, and everything else they represented.
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