In less than one year from now, we’ll have a rough idea of who the Democratic presidential frontrunner will be. Despite Joe Biden’s early dominance in the polls, the opportunity’s still there for a young upstart politician to make their impression on the American people, like an underdog Barack Obama did a decade ago. When they do, they’ll need a campaign song that perfectly distills their message and vision for the young. That song should be Bradley Cooper’s “Maybe It’s Time,” from A Star Is Born.
“Maybe It’s Time” is one of two songs we hear multiple times throughout A Star Is Born, a movie about how Bradley Cooper is the first man in human history to realize that Lady Gaga is a person under her makeup. (The other song is “Shallow,” the first song that Cooper and Gaga sing together that launches her to stardom, which is destined to win an Oscar in February and become a karaoke mainstay for the next 50 years.) “Maybe It’s Time” is Cooper’s signature song: his character Jackson Maine is an aging rock-dinosaur in a world that has no need for rock dinosaurs, and the central lyric — “Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die” — is relevantly metaphorical for many of the movie’s core themes, which include the double-edged sword of fame, the impossibility of true love, and the quiet genius of casting your own dog in your movie.
Some other lyrics from the song, which I love: “Nobody knows what awaits for the dead”; “some folks just believe in the things they heard and the things they read”; “It takes a lot to change a man, hell, it takes a lot to try”; “I'm glad I can't go back to where I came from / I'm glad those days are gone, gone for good”; most importantly, “maybe it’s time to let the old ways die” x 1000.
Why is this relevant? Not to be ageist — the older generation has given us much, and has much to give us — but it’s psychotic that decisions about the future are being made by people like Chuck Grassley, Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and Bernie Sanders, who will not be around to see much more of it. Grassley has been an elected official since 1959, four years before the Beatles played The Ed Sullivan Show. That means he has been squeezing the heart of America with his skeleton hand since before the creation of almost all the Western popular music anyone cares about.
“Maybe It’s Time” echoes controversial comments made by Oprah Winfrey in 2013, when she suggested that old white racists aren’t going to change their minds and “just have to die”. I think about this once a week now. The minds of many old white racists cannot be changed, barring a soul-shaking ayahuasca trip (unlikely) or some kind of Disney-like experience with a friendly brown face who teaches them the real racism was in them all along (also unlikely). They just have to die so their retrograde ideas about America no longer have any relevance on the national conversation. It will never be 1959 again, no matter what Chuck Grassley or his constituents want.
Now, a whippersnapper like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Kirsten Gillibrand could never go as far as advocating for elderly genocide. But “Maybe It’s Time” says it all. The old ways — hardcore social conservatism, white supremacy, the myth of America as shining city on the hill despite all the people who’ve been barred from the doors over the last 250 years — need to be forgotten by time. Our future president could try to boil down this idea into an easily reproducible slogan. Or, they could let Jackson Maine’s gravelly voice do the talking: “Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die.”
A strong and consistent ideological message rooted in climate change regulation, universal health care, diplomatic foreign policy, abolishing ICE, and the other great leftist ideas that will take us into the future? That’s important, obviously. A catchy song we recognize that sums all this up, in so many words? Maybe just as important, and a much better choice than “Fight Song.”
