Donald Trump’s campaign technically started with music. He has long been a subject in music. His surrogates explain away his videotaped boasting about sexual assault by comparing it to music. And despite artists’ objections, his rallies continue to use music. But Trump has also been a somewhat strange subject to protest with music. How do you raise consciousness about a subject that’s already depressingly overexposed? What noise can be louder than this noisiest of narcissists?
Trump embodies a media environment that complacently merges entertainment and news, where the mere mention of his name has a Midas-meets-Idiocracy-like power to transmogrify celebrity gossip into politics, and back again. So a fair amount of the musical response to his rise has had more to do with wrestling-style angles than, y’know, music. Everyone from R.E.M. to Adele to Neil Young to the Rolling Stones has complained about Trump appropriating their tunes. Tyler, the Creator and the White Stripes have sold Trump-bashingmerch. Countless big names across every genre have dissed him onstage, from Nicki Minaj to Kesha to Roger Waters to the Dixie Chicks. Wavves went so far as to ban Trump supporters from his shows. Anderson. Paak and 2 Chainz each baited him in their musicvideos. Carly Simon tweaked “You’re So Vain” against him for a pro-Hillary ad. The Roots even mocked him moments before Jimmy Fallon tousled whatever it is that Trump calls hair.
Something at least as complicated has taken place as musicians have grappled with how to battle Trump and his kind not on his reality-TV turf, but through their own medium. As with any political art, some of the most powerful hasn’t mentioned Trump by name, but rumblings were there when protesters chanted Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” and got a Trump event canceled. Reverberations continued through staggering albums of social consciousness like Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound or Solange’s A Seat at the Table, works imbibed with ideals of American greatness that stand in stark opposition to those represented by the not-so-funny-anymore red hats. Artists and their fans have come to terms with very real differences during the Democratic primaries, with the strange near-silence of Springsteen, with hip-hop’s longstanding tradition of praise for Trumpian gilded excess (et tu, Rae Sremmurd?).
This week, Death Cab for Cutie released their own anti-Trump song, “Million Dollar Loan.” It was the first in a campaign that promises 30 songs between now and election day from a coalition of performers united against Trump. So it’s as appropriate a time as any to assess some of the other songs in the last year that respond to the wall-loving wannabe in more overt terms. These are the better of the bunch.
Death Cab for Cutie: “Million Dollar Loan”
There’s a head-snapping, time-warped quality to Death Cab’s slow turn of the anti-Trump knife. A gleaming intro that recalls Transatlanticism and a melancholy acoustic reminiscent of Plans sets the scene for a keenly observed story-song about old Orange Face’s false claim that he built his business on nothing more than a “small loan of a million dollars” from his dad.
Damning Lyric: It’s hard to imagine anything here will ruffle Trump’s feathers, but the repetition of “Call your father on the phone / And get that million dollar loan” sure drives home the “you didn’t build that” point.
Rage Scale: 5/10. Ben Gibbard skewers Trump softly. Really, the lack of anger here as he delivers such a disgusted condemnation is impressive. Because of the well-wrought narrative, it’s not hard to imagine DCFC continuing to play this song during a Hillary Clinton administration.
YG: “FDT” [ft. Nipsey Hussle]
YG has said police tried to shut down his video shoot for the subtle-as-Trump-deserves “FDT,” and that the Secret Service tried to pull his album over it. But this Nipsey Hussle collaboration’s mix of simmering G-funk and plainspoken consternation (“He got me appreciating Obama way more”) ultimately seems worth a few hassles with the fuzz.
Damning Lyric: Pretty much the whole thing. It begins with the indelible opening line, “I like white people, but I don’t like you,” and builds from there.
Rage Scale: 8.5/10. Yes, strictly speaking the song does include an implicit death threat over Trump calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “drug dealers” (“Surprised El Chapo ain't tried to snipe you”), but the mood here, while angry, is also one of having just finished laughing only to realize a potential Trump presidency is no joke.
Mike Dean: “Grab Em By Da Pussy”
Kanye West producer Mike Dean wasted no time mashing up Trump’s vile anti-woman “locker room talk” with the Freedom Girls’ “The Official Donald Trump Jam” into an unsettling house track that, unfortunately, just about sums up the current Republican standard-bearer.
Damning Lyric: All. These are Trump’s own words, and those of his supporters.
Rage Scale: 10/10. It’s not that the song itself is so angry-sounding—sometimes a club beat is just a club beat—but if you can listen to this without your blood pressure rising, you might be Billy Bush in 2005.
DJ Shadow: “Nobody Speak” [ft. Run the Jewels]
Though not solely an anti-Trump track, this singular salvo from agit-rap MVPs Run the Jewels—over what the instrumental hip-hop pioneer DJ Shadow accurately described as a “boom-bappy” backing track—warrants a mention here for its scathing Donald diss. To wit...
Damning Lyric: “Flame your crew quicker than Trump fucks his youngest”
Rage Scale: 9/10. It’s hard to get much harsher than El-P’s twist on Trump infamously calling his daughter “a piece of ass.”
Pusha T: “Untouchable”
Like “Nobody Speak,” the former Clipse half’s anti-Trump barb is more of a passing mention, but give Pusha T credit for getting there way back in 2015. And for savaging the Donald over a Biggie sample.
Damning Lyric: “I am more U2, I am like Bono with the Edge / In Mexico, fuck Donald and his pledge”
Rage Scale: 4/10. Push’s sneer always retains too much cool-headedness to sound particularly angry. Plus, it’s hard to seem that mad when you’ve just made a U2 pun.
Perfect Giddimani: “Dollnald Trummp” [ft. Stephen Dajure]
A future authoritarian dystopia has rarely sounded like such a warmly inviting reggae party.
Damning Lyric:“A fool and his money is worse than a drunk”
Rage Scale: 3/10. This Jamaican singer, known for his 2004 hit “Hand Cart Bwoy,” is pissed (“Donald, you never respect my African heroes”), but “Dollnald Trummp” is irrepressibly sunny about it.
Brujeria: “Viva Presidente Trump!”
The grindcore Trump assault you never knew knew you wanted, from this pioneering Mexican-American extreme-metal band.
Damning Lyric: “He wants war / Get in the ring, fucker”
Rage Scale: 10/10. Despite the closing laughter, this is music for mosh-protesting a Trump rally.
Aimee Mann: “Can’t You Tell?”
Aimee Mann’s folk-rock strummer is part of the same “30 Days” series as Death Cab’s latest, with the Both half bringing a biting yet humane perspective lacking from other anti-Trump songs.
Damning Lyric: “Isn’t anybody going to stop me now? / I don’t want this job / I can’t do this job”
Rage Scale: 6/10. Mann is probably the most mellow-sounding protester in this bunch of songs, but bear in mind she’s singing from the point of view of an “unwell” person.
Swet Shop Boys: “T5”
Ex-Das Racist rapper Heems and actor/musician Riz MC are assailing the institutional racism of airport security on “T5,” but any critique of authoritarianism in 2016 sooner or later leads to a certain petty-dictator pouty-face.
Damning Lyric: Riz MC’s “Trump want my exit, but if he press a red button / To watch Netflix, bruv, I'm on”
Rage Scale: Let’s say 0 or 10, depending on whether you think it matters more that these two sound like they might be laughing, or that their laughter, given Trump’s well-publicized vow to ban Muslims from entering the United States, is to keep from crying. What once sounded like a joke is, in 2016, too close to home and too near the bone.