To the warmup stages of the US presidential election, which are always the song-jacking capital of the world. If you’re an obviously left-leaning artist who has written a superficially upbeat song with undercurrents – or rather, tumultuous overcurrents – of anguished American self-reproach, then chances are you can expect to hear it whipping a Donald Trump rally into orgasmic delirium over the next few months.
Take Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World, which was used by Trump at the official Trump Tower launch of his campaign for the Republican nomination back in June, including the lines: “We got a thousand points of light / For the homeless man /We got a kinder, gentler, / Machine gun hand /We got department stores and toilet paper / Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer / Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive / Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive.”
Finally, a politician who says what he actually thinks. Let’s trump this message all the way across America, until it blankets the entire nation like a noxious pall.
Of course, much like Born in the USA, that other hymn to the general awesomeness of life in the sprawling American underclass, it is just arguable that there are other readings of Rockin’ in the Free World. But if only listening to the chorus was good enough for Ronald Reagan, then it’s certainly adequate for Trump, who thinks detail is a Middle Eastern capital, and consequently requires no relationship with it, besides facilities for bombing the living crap out of it.
As Donald’s spokesman explained maddeningly to Rolling Stone: “Mr Trump is a huge fan of Neil Young and his music and will continue to be regardless of Neil’s political views.”
Then again, maybe Neil already knew that. As Rolling Stone pointed out, it was at a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young concert in Madison Square Gardens in 2006 that Trump joined Salman Rushdie in a singalong of Young’s anti-Bush song Let’s Impeach the President.
I know. Bit too much to take in there.
Moving right along, the latest artists to have their song Trumped are REM, whose It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine) was used for crowd-frenzying purposes at a Trump campaign stop in Washington this week. REM, needless to say, are not exactly thrilled, and have issued a statement explaining the American voter should concentrate on the bigger picture and so on. (I think it’s probably best to stay succinct with these messages. As Massachusetts punks Dropkick Murphys recently tweeted to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, who has a fondness for their song I’m Shipping Up to Boston: “Please stop using our music in any way … We literally hate you!!!”)
As for what Trump saw in It’s the End of the World As We Know It, this one is a puzzle. It is, after all, less of a subtext than a straight-up text. We’ll just have to assume that he is playing ironic games with the world, sending up the idea that the Trump candidacy is an apocalyptic event literally foretold in the Book of Revelation.
Yet while affronted cease-and-desist requests from musicians are all very well, isn’t it time for the left to try another tack, and stop the cross-political song raids happening just one way? Couldn’t leftwing politicians show solidarity with these songjacked artists by indulging in a little songjacking themselves?
Admittedly, there aren’t quite so many right-leaners in the pop and rock canon – or, perhaps, not quite so many who have deliberately outed themselves. But there are a few high-profile musical emissaries of the right. In fact, Lost in Showbiz is hereby reaching out to Jeremy Corbyn’s people and imploring them to nick one of their songs as a victory party warm-up this Saturday.
Forced to choose, I’d go for Swiss resident Phil Collins’s In the Air Tonight, because Jeremy’s been waiting for this moment … all his life. Oh Lord, Oh Lord.
Ideally, this act of war would coax an outraged Collins out of his Geneva money-nest, and into issuing a statement in which he denounced everything that Jeremy represented. Which, for the Blairites, would have the fringe benefit of making Tony now only the second most unappealing person to have taken that stand.
Thereafter, a Corbyn spokesperson could complete the eye-for-an-eye, saying something like: “Jeremy is a huge fan of Phil and his music, and will continue to be regardless of Phil’s political views. He even likes the soundtrack to Buster. In fact, just like American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, he has been a monster fan of Phil’s work all the way back to Genesis. He reads Sussudio as a searing indictment of capitalist aggression, particularly because its chorus is written in Esperanto or whatever.”
Clearly, it’s not the equivalent of Ronald Reagan’s quavering admiration for the Boss or Trump co-opting Neil Young. But, by crikey, it’d be a start.
