Beautiful Virgin Islands

Thursday, Jul 03, 2025

The Surprising Thing About Biden’s Inauguration

The colorful and joyful ceremony didn’t feel like a crisis-era bureaucratic procedure.


American poet Amanda Gorman reads a poem during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol.

Everyone knows that Joe Biden’s presidential aesthetic is purposefully boring: He’s promising a national nap time after Donald Trump’s violent four-year kegger. “Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire,” the new president said during his inauguration address today, speaking where insurrectionists had recently carried Molotov cocktails. It was natural to expect that Biden’s induction ceremony would make for a few hours as healthfully bland as a Zoom yoga session. (That is, unless you were one of the QAnon followers giddily awaiting the Space Force to intervene in the proceedings.)

Yet the first twist of the Biden era is that the 46th president’s inauguration was rather lit. It felt more like a trippy, tony masquerade than a crisis-era bureaucratic procedure. By the time of the scorching closing prayer by Reverend Silvester Beaman, late-in-a-Marvel-movie sensory overload had set in. Maybe that was because the pandemic added a dose of surreality via mandatory face wear and a flag-peppered National Mall. Maybe the ceremony hinted at a roaring-2020s cultural shift percolating after the grueling, catastrophic 2010s. In any case, the inauguration offered a reminder that the political dream of “normalcy” is a dream not of dullness, but of joy. Skepticism from the right and the left toward Biden’s gauzy rhetoric won’t and shouldn’t go away. But Wednesday was the moment to revel in the mass psychic unburdening that happens when the guy with the nuclear codes doesn’t openly stoke civil war.

After all, despite Trump’s gilded decorative tastes, the last inauguration was a bleak nightmare defined by the word carnage and the groans of 3 Doors Down. By contrast, the 2021 inauguration might persist in the public memory as a whirl of fun fashions: the regal purple of the coat swishing around Kamala Harris; the dusk-hour burgundy of Michelle Obama’s pantsuit; the kitschy zigzags of Bernie Sanders’s mittens; the craftwork sparkles on Ella Emhoff’s shoulders; the glimpse of Dior sneakers behind Amy Klobuchar as she speechified. The event was a musical extravaganza too. Americans know the songs of their patriotic canon plenty well, but they haven’t often heard those songs performed quite like they were performed today. The arts-and-culture establishment—which largely sat out Trump-era ceremonies in protest—was back to flaunt its repressed ridiculousness.


Saul Loeb


Certainly, any expectations that Lady Gaga would forgo gonzo excess for this sacred gig vanished as soon as she toddled out to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Gaga wanted to give America a feast: She’d braided her hair in the manner of a black-and-white challah; she wore a pouf dress that recalled a red-velvet cupcake; she sported a dove-shaped brooch as enormous as a Chipotle tortilla. (The dove itself snacked on an olive branch.) She then rendered the national anthem in the style of Richard Wagner’s Valkyries, which is really to say in Gaga’s own “Bad Romance” style: guttural, glamorous, serious, silly. When she got to the lyric “our flag was still there,” she turned around and belted to the American flag itself. One might call that maneuver preposterous in any other year, but was it not true that this particular flag persisted through a recent battle to tear it down? For Gaga to bellow any less ferociously, without such tearful commitment, would have been an abdication of duty.

Jennifer Lopez’s performance was, by contrast, a feat of musical restraint—at least for a bit. Singing with a delicate tone, she reworked the cadence of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”—a collectivist anthem written by an ancestral foil to the Trump family—to give it an adult-contemporary, democracy-is-fragile smoothness. But the military band’s arrangement and Lopez’s voice gathered fervor as the song went on. Then Lopez pulled off a series of sharp escalations: into the bombast of “America the Beautiful,” into a Spanish-language rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance, and into a mantra from Lopez’s own catalog—“Let’s get loud!” Stately reverence had given way to inclusive chutzpah. “That was great,” Klobuchar said, flatly and correctly, when she took the mic after Lopez.

The third headlining slot of the show went to Garth Brooks, the slyly kooky country legend. He’d previously joked about being the only Republican at the inauguration, and his participation was advertised as a small sign that Biden’s calls for unity would not go entirely unheeded. Singing “Amazing Grace” a cappella, with his hat in his hand, Brooks’s almost-angelic affect emphasized the meaning of the lyrics “how sweet the sound.” When he asked listeners—in person and at home—to sing along with him for the final verse, the silence that continued to swaddle him felt psychedelically intense. Maybe the senators in attendance were shy about their voices; maybe they were muffled by their masks. But in any case, this was the moment when the absence of in-person inaugural crowds came into focus. If Biden succeeds in his task to free America from pandemics and seditionists, we’ll be able to sing en masse again.

Gaga, J.Lo, Garth—these are long-established superstars, and their performances made a strong case for why we have normcore, big-tent entertainers (and, maybe, political leaders) in the first place. But the signature art-statement of the day came from a newcomer. Arrestingly decked in canary yellow and cherry red, the 22-year-old poet Amanda Gorman debuted her new work, “The Hill We Climb,” in a flawless five-minute recitation. The poem itself is a hyper-alliterative string of reassuring aphorisms; the most moving passage, about “a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,” was written after the attack on the Capitol. Really it was Gorman’s delivery—flowing with tidal grace, accentuated by symphony-conductor hand motions—that cast a spell in the manner of great music. “We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,” went one line of her poem. The garish hues and the go-for-broke singing of this inauguration suggested a correlated truth: If we achieve true peace, it might get loud.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
DJI Launches Heavy-Duty Coaxial Quadcopter with 80 kg Lift Capacity
U.S. Senate Approves Major Legislation Dubbed the 'Big Beautiful Bill'
Largest Healthcare Fraud Takedown in U.S. History Announced by DOJ
Poland Implements Border Checks Amid Growing Migration Tensions
Political Dispute Escalates Between Trump and Musk
Emirates Airline Expands Market Share with New $20 Million Campaign
Amazon Reaches Milestone with Deployment of One Millionth Robot
US Senate Votes to Remove AI Regulation Moratorium from Domestic Policy Bill
Yulia Putintseva Calls for Spectator Ejection at Wimbledon Over Safety Concerns
Jury Deliberations in Diddy Trial Yield Partial Verdict in Serious Criminal Charges
House Oversight Committee Subpoenas Former Jill Biden Aide Amid Investigation into Alleged Concealment of President Biden's Cognitive Health
King Charles Plans Significant Role for Prince Harry in Coronation
Two Chinese Nationals Arrested for Espionage Activities Against U.S. Navy
Amazon Reaches Major Automation Milestone with Over One Million Robots
Extreme Heat Wave Sweeps Across Europe, Hitting Record Temperatures
Meta Announces Formation of Ambitious AI Unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs
Robots Compete in Football Tournament in China Amid Injuries
Trump Administration Considers Withdrawal of Funding for Hospitals Providing Gender Treatment to Minors
Texas Enacts Law Allowing Gold and Silver Transactions
China Unveils Miniature Insect-Like Surveillance Drone
OpenAI Secures Multimillion-Dollar AI Contracts with Pentagon, India, and Grab
Marc Marquez Claims Victory at Dutch Grand Prix Amidst Family Misfortune
Germany Votes to Suspend Family Reunification for Asylum Seekers
Elon Musk Critiques Senate Budget Proposal Over Job Losses and Strategic Risks
Los Angeles Riots ended with Federal Investigations into Funding
Budapest Pride Parade Draws 200,000 Participants Amid Government Ban
Southern Europe Experiences Extreme Heat
Xiaomi's YU7 SUV Launch Garners Record Pre-Orders Amid Market Challenges
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez's Lavish Wedding in Venice
Russia Launches Largest Air Assault on Ukraine Since Invasion
Education Secretary Announces Overhaul of Complaints System Amid Rising Parental Grievances
Massive Anti-Government Protests Erupt in Belgrade
Trump Ends Trade Talks with Canada Over Digital Services Tax
UK Government Softens Welfare Reform Plans Amid Labour Party Rebellion
Labour Faces Rebellion Over Disability Benefit Reforms Ahead of Key Vote
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Host Lavish Wedding in Venice Amid Protests
Trump Asserts Readiness for Further Strikes on Iran Amid Nuclear Tensions
North Korea to Open New Beach Resort to Boost Tourism Economy
UK Labour Party Faces Internal Tensions Over Welfare Reforms
Andrew Cuomo Hints at Potential November Comeback Amid Democratic Primary Results
Curtis Sliwa Champions His Vision for New York City Amid Rising Crime Concerns
Federal Reserve Proposes Changes to Capital Rule Affecting Major Banks
EU TO HUNGARY: LET THEM PRIDE OR PREP FOR SHADE. ORBÁN TO EU: STAY IN YOUR LANE AND FIX YOUR OWN MESS.
Trump Escalates Criticism of Media Over Iran Strike Coverage
Trump Announces Upcoming US-Iran Meeting Amid Controversial Airstrikes
Trump Moves to Reshape Middle East Following Israel-Iran Conflict
Big Four Accounting Firms Fined in Exam Cheating Scandal
NATO Members Agree to 5% Defense Spending Target by 2035
Australia's Star Casino Secures $195 Million Rescue Package Amid Challenges
UK to Enhance Nuclear Capabilities with Acquisition of F-35A Fighter Jets
×