ABSTRACT
Music has long been a powerful tool to influence behavior and give voice to emotions and belief systems. Rock the Vote was an organization funded by MTV and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to get young people involved in the political process. Rock the Vote had tapped into a rich vein of motivating people by using musicians and celebrities as validators to express the importance of voting. The messenger is just as important as the message. Not all situations call for celebrities, however. Celebrities are also capable of complicating matters. Some situations call for something entirely different. The messenger influences how communication is received. Oftentimes, a spokesperson, the person most closely associated with a crisis, isn’t the one most directly affected by it, but the one who speaks about it most effectively, giving the impression that he or she assessed the matter objectively before drawing conclusions. The importance of validators was on full display during the COVID-19 pandemic.
