By now you surely have heard or read stories about how Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff are huge vinyl nerds. The Democratic presidential candidate and Second Gentleman have made a habit of popping into local record stores to pick up records in the midst of the harried campaign season. But on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM radio show on Tuesday (Oct. 8), Harris opened up a bit more about her musical obsessions, beginning the chat with a touching story about how she and Emhoff reacted to the news that Prince died back in April 2016.
Stern opened the special afternoon interview by playing his favorite Prince album — the 1989 Batman soundtrack — cueing up “Batdance” because he said he was aware Harris was a big fan of the late singer. Though Stern was adamant the Purple One’s 11th studio album — which sat at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart for six weeks — was his finest work, Harris adamantly, and politely, disagreed.
“No, 1999 I thought was spectacular, you can go back to his early days. Him on the guitar, there was just nothing like it,” said Harris, who also stopped by The View and The Late Show on Tuesday as part of an intensified media schedule in the final month of her still too-close-to-call race with convicted felon former President Donald Trump.
“Even you look at Bruno Mars today, who’s just been influenced by Prince,” she said, before sharing the anecdote about how she and Emhoff honored the “Purple Rain” star after they heard about his death from an accidental fentanyl overdose at age 57. “The night he passed Doug and I were in L.A. and actually just — he and I have very different musical tastes… [he’s into] Depeche Mode, that’s him, I grew up kind of hip-hop — but Prince is the one intersection where we both love and we just played Prince all night long. We dance, we sang his songs, that was our little tribute.”
The hour-long interview, the longest sit-down Harris has done since becoming the surprise, 11th-hour Democratic candidate following President Biden’s unprecedented decision to step down from running for a second term back in July, touched on a number of salient political topics as well. Harris said she was incensed at reports in a new book by legendary political reporter Bob Woodward that Trump sent hard-to-get COVID testing machines to his friend Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in the midst of the pandemic, adding that she thinks the twice impeached Trump is getting played by his autocratic friends.
“I grew up in the neighborhood,” Harris told Stern. “Some would say you’re getting punked if you stand in favor of somebody who’s an adversary over your friends on principles that we all agree on.” While she declined to say who she would put in her cabinet if elected on Nov. 5 when Stern predicted that it would likely include former Wyoming-congresswoman-turned-Trump-antagonist Republican Liz Cheney — who is voting for Harris, along with her father, former VP Dick Cheney — Harris said, “I gotta win, Howard. I gotta win. I gotta win. And listen, but the thing about Liz Cheney, let me just say, she’s remarkable.”
In addition to revealing her obsession with Formula One racing and Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton in particular, and calling Trump a “loser” several times, the friendly chat ended with Harris’ recollection of attending U2’s mind-bending opening run at Las Vegas’ Sphere.
“Oh my God have you been to the Sphere?,” Harris excitedly asked Stern when he mentioned that she was spotted at one of the U2 shows there in January. “Let me just say basically everyone should go in with a clear head,” she laughed after Stern, who wore a three-piece black suit for the in-studio chat, said he was freaked out by the reports of the overwhelming visuals that he feared were “too much.”
“Like don’t be high,” Stern said. “Correct,” Harris responded with one of her signature belly laughs. “Because it’s a lot. Like there’s a lot of visual stimulation… I love U2 and actually it was a surprise for Doug.”
Watch Harris talk U2 and Sphere below.
