politics

After President Trump unveiled his “reciprocal tariffs” on multiple regions, from China to the European Union, in April, music companies began to panic. T-shirt distributors worried about their Asia-based suppliers and indie guitar-pedal companies fretted about the impossibility of moving production to the U.S. As John Mlynczak, president/CEO of NAMM, explained, “What’s really devastating about this idea of ‘Oh, we’ll just move manufacturing elsewhere’ is that it’s actually not that easy. These workers around the world are trained to understand how to test musical products, to buff the bell of a brass instrument perfectly, to tune the strings on a violin.” Trump has since changed tariff rates on several countries multiple times, heightening the chaos in many industries — with the exception of vinyl and CD manufacturers, who are exempt.

Kneecap, an Irish hip-hop band, flashed these messages during its Coachella performance in April: “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people” and “F— Israel. Free Palestine.” The backlash was intense. The band lost its U.S. booking agent, a Fox & Friends host compared its message to “Nazi Germany,” and Sharon Osbourne, longtime manager of her husband Ozzy Osbourne, feuded publicly with the band. Two months later, at Glastonbury, metal-rap duo Bob Vylan declared “death, death to the IDF,” referring to the Israeli Defense Forces — leading UTA to drop the British band and the U.S. state department to cancel its visas. Frontman Bobby Vylan later expressed no regret, calling the band’s cancellation experience “minimal compared to what people in Palestine are going through.”

In October, Trump deployed Kenny Loggins‘ 1986 Top Gun pump-up hit “Danger Zone” to — it’s still inexplicably surreal to describe this — score an AI video depicting himself in a plane, plopping poop on No Kings protesters. Loggins responded, “This is an unauthorized use of my performance of ‘Danger Zone.’ Nobody asked me for my permission, which I would have denied, and I request that my recording on this video is removed immediately.” In November, Olivia Rodrigo condemned the use of her song “All-American Bitch” as part of an ICE video encouraging self-deportation. She posted (then deleted): “Don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda.”

Longtime progressive and Democrat booster Bruce Springsteen told a Manchester, U.K., audience in May that the U.S. is “currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.” After the president pushed back, referring on Truth Social to “Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen” and calling him “dumb as a rock” and a “dried out prune of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!),” Springsteen released the speech as part of his six-track Land of Hope and Dreams EP, which has scored nearly 3.3 million Spotify streams. Significantly further below Trump’s radar, singer-songwriter Jesse Welles emerged as a traditional, ’60s-style protest singer, going viral for his satirical “Join ICE” song — then earning backlash of his own by appearing on the Trump-friendly Joe Rogan podcast and condemning Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

In July, U.S. immigration officials picked up Tunisian singer Rami Othmane near his longtime home in Los Angeles, declaring him an “illegal alien” whose visa had expired years ago, despite his marriage to a U.S. citizen. He was detained for 13 days at an L.A. facility known as B-18, telling Billboard he had no soap, shower or toothpaste, among other discomforts. Also this year, ICE detained Loose Ends singer Jane Eugene, who is British; General Fiyah, a New Zealand reggae singer who’d been scheduled to perform at a festival in Washington state, was detained and deported; and Jaroslav Škuta, a Czech clarinetist for a chamber ensemble, was detained at Detroit Metro Airport and refused entry into the U.S. “They take your humanity, they take your dignity,” Othmane said. “They see you as an object.”

If Congress doesn’t extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire at the end of 2025, healthcare prices are certain to spike 20% or more in many states — affecting “the jobs with the biggest share of ACA policyholders,” as the The Wall Street Journal reported in October, including “chiropractors, musicians and a category that includes farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers.” The impact on indie artists will be especially devastating. Tatum Allsep, founder and CEO of the Music Health Alliance, opined recently in Nashville’s Tennessean: “It is about whether the very folks who give Tennessee its sound, and our state’s greatest natural resources, will be forced into silence by health care costs they can no longer afford.”

Every now and then, the president shows glimpses of his musical taste — which isn’t always in line with his politics. Testing the sound system for his White House Rose Garden reconstruction in August, he played Procol Harum‘s Summer of Love classic “A Whiter Shade of Pale” along with Joe Cocker‘s “You Are So Beautiful” and tracks by Elvis Presley and Luciano Pavarotti. The renovation, which cost nearly $2 million, included, among other things, replacing grass with tiles, leading Vogue to opine, “They paved paradise?”

In May, the hip-hop star born Kentrell Gaulden received a pardon after a judge sentenced him to nearly two years in prison, five years of probation and a $200,000 fine for weapons possession — joining Lil Wayne and Kodak Black, both of whom Trump pardoned in 2021, at the end of his previous administration. Sean “Diddy” Combs, sentenced in October to 50 months in prison for sex trafficking and transportation for prostitution, told inmates he would receive a pardon, too, according to TMZ — but he hasn’t. Pras Michel, the ex-Fugee recently sentenced to 14 years in prison for facilitating illegal campaign donations, also reportedly said he hopes Trump will “turn an eye on me.”

Major artists mostly avoided Trump’s first inauguration in 2017. Reliably Republican Toby Keith was the only big name, aside from Lee Greenwood, 3 Doors Down, Jackie Evancho and The Piano Guys. This year’s January ceremony had more star power, with Carrie Underwood, Jason Aldean, the Village People and Kid Rock. Underwood spun her appearance as a moment of unity, declaring, “I am humbled to answer the call at a time when we must all come together in the spirit of unity and looking to the future.” The new Health and Human Services secretary, anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, have also attracted music-star supporters, drawing Jewel to an inauguration performance (she later apologized because she “caused pain”) and, in November, posing with country singers Dwight Yoakam and Junior Brown.

Top executives from dominant music-streaming companies have met with Trump in some capacity since he won last year’s election. Apple CEO Tim Cook, along with Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin, CEO and co-founder, respectively, of YouTube owner Google, attended the White House’s tech dinner in September. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s executive chairman, met with Trump and altered the editorial policy of The Washington Post, which he purchased in 2013, to emphasize “two pillars” he described as “personal liberties and free markets.” And a year ago, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s executive chairman, spoke with the president-elect by phone, sharing information about the robust numbers his interview with Joe Rogan had generated.