Tom Morello Charts Similarities with Obama, Talks Election 2008

Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello can't help notice the similarities between himself and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. "Well, you know, being the half-Kenyan Harvard graduate from Illinois in his early forties, not running for president this year's election gives me a unique perspective," Morello tells Rolling Stone's Austin Scaggs. "I've always felt more comfortable on the other side of the barbed wire fence, you know, lobbing musical Molotov cocktails at the party."

"If America elects a black president it will be a different country than the one I've seen my entire life and that would be a step definitely in the right direction," Morello added.

A member of Rage Against the Machine supporting a presidential hopeful? Has the band softened on its radical edge? " I don't think it has anything to do with rebelling against a President. It has to do with policy. The Democratic Congress was elected in 2006 to end the war and they rolled over like lap dogs," Morello adds. So who does Morello think will win this election? "In the next presidential election America will get the president it deserves. If after eight years of Bush's foreign and domestic crimes that we elect a Republican president, you know, it seems to me like you should be able to run a barnyard animal against a Republican and win in a ninety-ten split," Morello says. "So if America elects McCain over, you know, the clearly intelligent, erudite, fair-minded Barack Obama, then either way we'll get the President we deserve."

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Song Stories

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz | 2008

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."

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