Pop music for Presidents' Day 2016
In recognition of Presidents' Day, I decided to take a look at how often the names of American presidents, as well as forms of the word president, appear in pop music. Only one president is referred to directly in songs from Billboard's year-end Top Ten charts (1951-2015): Andrew Jackson, who is referred to twice in "The Battle of New Orleans" (1959), once as Colonel Jackson and a second time as Old Hickory (Washington also occurs once in the set, but only as the name of the city, which is discussed below.) Furthermore, variants of the word president are absent from this dataset.
Thus, I tused the same search on the collection of songs from the Billboard year-end Top Thirty charts from the same time period. As for the smaller set, Andrew Jackson is the most frequently mentioned president in the collection, with two mentions (in a song carried over from the smaller set) here:
Four other presidents are (and only apparently, in some cases) mentioned by name in the Top Thirty dataset. The first is Ronald Reagan, who is apparently referenced in the following song from 1988, specifically in the line "Ronnie's got a new gun."
The only president whose first and last names are both used together in the dataset is Bill Clinton, in the following song from 1996:
There is also a mention of Roosevelt, presumably Franklin Delano, in "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" (2007); however, among other sources, Urban Dictionary is unclear on whether the reference is to the man or the dime he appears on.
Finally, Barack Obama (and his wife) are mentioned in the following song from 2010:
While not in direct reference to a president, but to a city named after one, Washington appears in two songs in the set: "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" (1955) and the following from 1956:
"The Flying Saucer" is one of several songs in the set that include the word president. Others are "Why Can't We Be Friends" (1975), "One More Chance" (1995), "Billionaire" (2010), and "Good Feeling" (2012).
And finally, there is one song that not only includes the word president, but also presidential podium and presidential seal: