Donald Trump just announced his candidacy for president, but he’s already making new enemies. After the billionaire played Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” at his launch event, the Canadian musician posted a statement on Facebook saying that he hadn’t authorized the song’s use and didn’t want to be involved with a political system tainted by corporate interests. His disapproval was hardly surprising. The man who released “Let’s Impeach The President” in 2006 as a response to Bush’s presidency was bound to reject any kind of association with a character like Trump.
Young’s objection is consistent with tradition. Popular artists and high-profile Republicans have repeatedly struggled to get along, resulting in highly uncomfortable public exchanges.
The dispute with Young isn’t Trump’s first conflict with an artist. In 2011, Mac Miller released his single “Donald Trump.” (“We going to take over the world while these haters getting mad,” Miller mercilessly raps.) Rolling Stone called it an “irresistible bro-down” while Trump approvingly compared Miller to Eminem, another white rapper that he knew about. The relationship soured, however, when Miller said he hated The Donald in an interview with Complex magazine. Thereafter Trump demanded royalties for the song and called the rapper “Little @MacMiller” on Twitter. The love was lost.
Congressman Paul Ryan experienced similar heartbreak in 2012 when he declared his love for Rage Against the Machine during his stint as Mitt Romney’s running mate. The feeling wasn’t mutual. The band’s guitarist Tom Morello wrote that Ryan was “the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades.” Ryan would later claim that the band was never his favorite anyway because he hated the group’s lyrics. He just liked their sound.
Governor Chris Christie’s feelings suffered in 2014 when his idol Bruce Springsteen joined Jimmy Fallon for a “Born To Run” parody addressing Bridgegate. Months later, when a woman at a town hall suggested to Christie that Springsteen didn’t like him, he insisted otherwise and said they had actually spoken recently, so there!
This year has also been eventful for music-liking Republicans. In January, after Scott Walker played the song “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” ahead of a speech in Iowa, the Dropkick Murphys begged the Wisconsin governor to stop using their music over Twitter. (“We literally hate you!”) Tellingly, Senator Ted Cruz didn’t name many names when he was asked about his own musical taste, although he did share that despite listening to classic rock growing up, time had changed his ways. “I actually intellectually find this very curious, but on 9/11, I didn’t like how rock music responded,” Cruz explained. “And country music, collectively, the way they responded, it resonated with me.” Would you believe me if I told you that this answer came immediately after he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president?
Senator Marco Rubio is in the running too, and he is probably at the top of the GOP’s coolness ranks. According to BuzzFeed, Rubio is on a first-name basis with Pitbull! He also likes Tupac. But he has issues with Jay Z, who he believes needs to “get informed” on Cuba, and it seems unlikely that he will ever win over “the youth” while he’s going after the Carters.
The obvious takeaway is that the GOP has a music problem. If they want to win big in 2016, they need to roll out hot Republican artists and hot Republican tastemakers.