Lordy. I hope there will be a license. Oddjob Steven Cheung says that Team Trump has a license to play “My Hero,” which it did Friday in Arizona when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. took stage among fountains of fireworks to endorse Donald Trump. Foo Fighters took umbrage to this and said that they never gave permission for the song to be used and don’t use it again. Then Cheung quipped back at them on Twitter. Then Foo Fighters doubled down. Sigh. Either Trump needs to stop alienating people or he needs to have Kid Rock do all his music. Talk about a lose/lose proposition.
“Foo Fighters were not asked permission, and if they were they would not have granted it,” the spokesperson said.
However, the Trump campaign said it had permission to play the song.
“We have a license to play the song,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in an email to The Hill.
He also took to the social platform X to dispute the claim.
“It’s Times Like These facts matter, don’t be a Pretender. @foofighters,” he wrote, referring to two other songs by the band. […]
The spokesperson for the band early Monday reiterated it did not give permission to play the song when reached for comment on the Trump campaign’s response.
“Foo Fighters were not asked permission, and again, even if they had been they would not have granted it,” the spokesperson said.
I have to confess to some basic confusion here. This should be cut and dried. If Cheung has the license, then voila. Produce a copy. It comes down to that. I can’t believe the band would publicly state there was no license if in fact there was one. They have a contracts administrator and s/he knows where their work is licensed and where it’s not.
It’s funny how documentation about Kamala Harris’s birth certificate and her mother’s immigration records are somehow findable and are transmitted by Laura Loomer and the MAGAs all over the internet, but one little piece of paper, a music license agreement, can’t be found in Trump world?
Let’s see what happens next. Right now it’s a classic standoff on Main Street: the license on one side, the cease and desist letter on the other. One of them has to exist or the other one sure as shootin’ will. And this keeps happening to Trump — and other Republicans.
Back in 2020, The Rolling Stones threatened to sue Trump for using their timeless track “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” at his events. They later were joined by both BMI and ASCAP in decrying use of the band’s music. That led to a throng of musicians teaming with the Artist Rights Alliance penning an open letter that called on major U.S. political parties to “establish clear policies requiring campaigns to seek consent of featured recording artists, songwriters and copyright owners before publicly using their music in a political or campaign setting.”
Signatories of that letter included the Stones, Elton John, Aerosmith, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Green Day, Jason Isbell, Blondie, Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Rosanne Cash, Alanis Morissette, Courtney Love, Linkin Park, Lykke Li, Train and Lionel Richie, Lorde, Sia and Regina Spektor.
The rally-music ruckus goes all the way back at least to when then-POTUS and former SAG President Ronald Reagan told a crowd in 1984: “America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts. It rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen.” The Boss, who was riding the Born in the U.S.A. wave and among the world’s top acts at the time, made it quite clear he didn’t dig that.
Interesting this phenomenon has been going on for a while now, but like so many societal undercurrents, the advent of Trump has finally brought things to the breaking point. But take this as yet another point of reference: we’ve been seeing for some time that the Republican party exists only by minority rule. Ron Filipkowski made a comment yesterday, “Where would the Republican Party be today without the Founding Founders’ OG DEI program for white male property owners – the Electoral College?” That’s about the size of it.
And you know I’m going to quote David Frum now: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” We live to see it come to pass. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a turning point in our culture and in our history. We knew it at the time. Now we see how deep the roots of this change go.
And the oddball thing is not that the man is so important. He’s nothing and a nobody insofar as actual character or human achievement is concerned. He’s the inheritor of great wealth and he created a TV persona when he wasn’t busy bankrupting one company after the next. But he represents the Republican id and the underbelly of America and he personifies our obsession with television and illusion, trivia and short attention spans, bread and circus. That’s how all of this has come to pass.
Trump is our dark mirror. And the mirror is about to shatter, bigly. And it’s going to be more than seven years bad luck for the GOP, I guarantee.
Given the number of corrupt lawyers as politicians, judges, and practicing attorneys…the legal profession has taken its share of hits. That being said, I really believe a good lawyer who is fighting for justice, knowing how the system works, is priceless in reigning these criminals in. Sounds like the attorneys representing the band should get to work. As one of their songs asks: are you going to resist or be abused? That sums it up nicely.
well if trump and chung say they have a license to play others music then it must be true just like Trump’s “accountants” don’t have CPA’s. wondering why they don’t play T. Swift….
Wonder if the Trump campaign was playing Elvis Costello’s “Less Than Zero”? After all, Trump IS Less Than Zero!
I think we all know the answer to the question “Who’s full of it?” and it isn’t the Artists. The orange disaster has been exfoliating lies since long before he got into office. It’s his “M.O.”.
Can’t wait for him to try to fight this in court. Got a license? Produce it…or cease and desist using other people’s creative work, and pay the fine for having used it already without seeking permission.
Pretty cut and dried.