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It’s no secret to anyone who is regularly on social media and is not from the land of MAGA Delulu that Elon Musk has not only eroded the value of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, but he has turned it into a utopia of racial slurs, right-wing propaganda and shameless Trump-humping. Well, one media outlet is not about to pretend Musk hasn’t turned X into a MAGA fan page and it will no longer post on the platform because of it.
The Guardian is having none of Musk and his X-Klan (see what I did there?) shenanigans.
From Variety:
The Guardian made the announcement on Wednesday in a post on its website, writing that “the benefits of being on the platform formerly called Twitter” have now been “outweighed by the negatives.” The publication cited the “often disturbing content” found on the platform and said the way it handled last week’s U.S. presidential election — which saw Donald Trump win a second term — “crystallized” its decision.
“This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism,” the publication said. “The U.S. presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”
Musk, of course, responded to the news on X by basically describing Trump but applying the definition to The Guardian, tweeting, “They are a laboriously vile propaganda machine.”
That’s rich coming from the guy who supports the guy who has been fact-checked and found to be lying more than any modern president — the same president who spent four years spreading factless and thoroughly debunked election fraud propaganda until he kicked and screamed his way back into the White House.
Shout out to The Guardian for refusing to normalize Musk, Trump and the rest of the white nationalist propagandists who are, indeed, relying on lies and bigotry to “shape political discourse.” That’s what integrity actually looks like, not that any of the aforementioned would know anything about that.
Pharrell Williams is clarifying a misinterpreted quote he gave to The Hollywood Reporter about celebrity endorsements, which led some to believe he was dissing Taylor Swift over voicing her support for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
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In a new cover story with GQ, Williams explained, “They pit you against each other. I love Taylor. She knows that.”
Noting that he didn’t even mention her in the interview, the “Happy” singer added, “I bought a 1989 Taylor t-shirt online last year, and I was walking around here with it tucked into my jeans. I love her. I love people, bro. That was some right-wing troll s—. But I heard something the other day that made the most sense in the world: Right-wing, left-wing, all the same bird.”
Swift was one of many musicians gave Harris their seal of approval this past election, with Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion and more speaking out in support of the Democratic ticket before Donald Trump ultimately won the presidency earlier this month.
In a post shared with her 238 million followers, Swift expressed her admiration for Harris, calling her a “steady-handed, gifted leader” and a “warrior” for causes she holds dear, such as LGBTQ+ rights and women’s reproductive freedoms.
Shortly after her endorsement, the Hollywood Reporter interview with Williams was published in which he said he doesn’t “do politics” and gets “annoyed sometimes” by celebrity endorsements. “There are celebrities that I respect that have an opinion, but not all of them. I’m one of them people [who says], ‘What the heck? Shut up. Nobody asked you,’” he said at the time. “When people get out there and get self-righteous and they roll up their sleeves and s—, and they are out there walking around with a placard: ‘Shut up!’ So, no, I would rather stay out of the way, and obviously, I’m going to vote how I’m going to vote. I care about my people and I care about the country, but I feel there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, and I’m really about the action.”
A week after Donald Trump won the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, The Blessed Madonna has Tuesday (Nov. 12) published an essay on her newly launchedSubstack in response.
The Kentucky-born, London-based producer (real name: Marea Stamper) writes that she is “yoked to the brink of collapse with contempt for millions of my fellow Americans, myself included possibly. When Project 2025 spelled out the plan to cement power in the hands of white, straight men, while kneecapping every inch of progress made in our country over the last fifty years, I believed them, just as I believed Trump in 2016. I believe they intend to do what they have promised. But still, I feel like someone kicked the air out of me.”
The Blessed Madonna, who released her debut album Godspeed in October, is one of the few politically vocal electronic artists in the scene and is one of a handful of producers to publicly comment on the election results, with Massive Attack and Moby also sharing their thoughts following the Nov. 5 election. Read her complete statement below.
At night, I flip through my phone and try to make a timeline, something that will put this in a linear form that I can understand.
417 weeks ago, I was boarding a plane and a bunch guys in camo and MAGA gear got on. I posted a picture and I tagged United Airlines and said, these men are wearing clothing associated with a hate group and I feel uncomfortable. I was absolutely serious. But the comments poured in calling me judgemental, overreactive, snide, unhelpful. “You don’t know these guys at all! Terrible form. You would go nuts if someone did that to you.” As if that MAGA hat isn’t the stand in for a white hood. As if we did not see those men scaling the wall of the Capitol four years later.
It doesn’t matter how many pictures I look at or timestamps I check though. It’s all a knot of repeating scenarios. I tell my mother it will be ok. I tell myself it will be ok. Someone does something that makes me lose faith in humanity. Someone does something that restores it, for a while. It all just swings back and forth, ticking like a metronome which does not tell time, but keeps it in a holding pattern.
This week the metronome’s pendulum has swung mostly to shame. I indulged in the kind of optimism that no mother who has ever had to give her black or brown son “the talk” about police brutality will ever have the luxury to enjoy. I am yoked to the brink of collapse with contempt for millions of my fellow Americans, myself included possibly. When Project 2025 spelled out the plan to cement power in the hands of white, straight men, while kneecapping every inch of progress made in our country over the last fifty years, I believed them, just as I believed Trump in 2016. I believe they intend to do what they have promised. But still, I feel like someone kicked the air out of me. Women have cast their vote for men who would let them bleed to death in a hospital parking lot from a miscarriage, should they need an abortion?
I am so angry, I feel as if I drank poison and am waiting for the other guys to die.
This is who we are. This is America.
Don’t say it’s not.
We have done this now not twice, but millions of times in millions of ways. We have have done it at the border. We have done it in for-profit prisons and for nothing executions. We have done it in forever wars and proxy wars and culture wars. We have sold our schools and public hospitals off for parts and left human beings in the wreckage.
And We The People have chosen as a country to buy what that vile man is selling, the real American dream: white supremacy. And he will sell it to you whether you can redeem or not. And he has sold it to you, though in the end, it will redeem no one and nothing. And so tonight, what I lack in optimism, is replaced with rage, which itself I believe can be a kind of love. It is not a gentle or comforting kind of love, but the love that lives behind bared teeth and says: motherf—ker, one of us is about to die trying.
Following Donald Trump’s 2024 Presidential Election victory, Uncle Luke took to Instagram Live and blasted the Latinos who cast their vote for Trump.
Per NBC News’ exit polls, Trump earned 45 percent of the Latino vote — while Harris held 51 percent — which is a 13-point uptick for the twice-impeached president elect compared to the 2020 election. It’s also a record high for a Republican presidential nominee, as Trump toppled George W. Bush’s 44 percent in the 2004 election.
“All y’all who didn’t vote for Kamala, y’all stupid a– gon’ get deported. Y’all having marches and s–t already. We are not going out there to march,” Luke said. “Black people are not going to march for you. I’m sorry, we will not be marching. It’s no more such thing as Black and brown people. It’s Black. We will not be marching with you.”
The former 2 Live Crew frontman continued: “The line got drawn last Tuesday,” he continued. “We know where we stand with all y’all. White people know where they stand with white women. Black people know where they stand with Hispanics. We though y’all were our friends. Y’all go through some things, we be out there fighting and marching and then you do this.”
Luke believes some Black people may be distancing themselves from Latinos in the future, and joked about how ICE agents looking to deport illegal immigrants will be singing along to Vanilla Ice’s chart-topping 1990 single “Ice Ice Baby.”
“Now you got to worry about the little Black ladies who sitting there looking out the window calling the people on you,” he said. “Hey ICE. They going to be singing the song. ‘Ice Ice Baby.’”
Luke’s commentary caused quite a stir on social media. “Luke isn’t a Black American so idk why he cackling talking about we,” one fan fired back on X. “You are Carribean not Black American.”
Trump overwhelmingly beat out Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election. In addition to winning the popular vote, per NBC News, the business mogul — who in May was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — also took the Electoral College 312 to 226, and swept all seven swing states.
Watch Uncle Luke’s rant below.
Kid Rock is celebrating Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election in his signature, over-the-top style.
The 53-year-old musician (real name: Robert James Ritchie) shared a video on Instagram Friday (Nov. 8), offering two distinct reactions to the election outcome: one from his larger-than-life onstage persona and another from his more laid-back, everyday self.
Titled “Official Election Reaction: Kid Rock vs. Bob Ritchie,” the approximately two-minute clip opens with the rocker’s infamous bad boy image. Stepping out in a fiery red jumpsuit, holding a cigar, and sporting a white MAGA hat, the rocker dramatically celebrates Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. In true Kid Rock fashion, he drops the mic, grabs his crotch, and flips off the camera.
The video then cuts to a more subdued Bob Ritchie moment, where the singer sheds his onstage persona in favor of a casual Detroit Tigers cap, plain white T-shirt, green shorts and a wrist brace. Sitting in a wooden chair, he adopts a more reflective tone as his 2017 anthem “American Rock ‘n Roll” plays in the background.
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“First off, let me convey to my family, friends, and supporters that now is not the time to gloat,” the singer narrates, accompanied by imagery of American flags and neighborhood homes. “We must remember that most of our left-leaning friends are good people who want the same things in life that we do, but simply think differently about how to get there.”
The scene shifts to footage of Rock performing live as he declares, “It is now time to be the bigger man, to extend an olive branch, and unite all reasonable people of this great nation.”
The tone then turns more patriotic, with the video cutting to clips of Trump passionately shouting “fight” after his attempted assassination at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa.
“God has blessed America, and together with President Trump, we will make America great again,” Rock concludes.
The video closes with a teaser for the musician’s Rock the Country 2025 tour, a 10-date trek billed as “A Festival for We the People.” The tour launches April 4-5 in Livingston, La., and wraps July 25-26 in Anderson, S.C. Full lineup and venue details were not available at press time. See more details here.
In addition to Rock, Trump’s 2024 campaign garnered endorsements from notable figures such as country stars Jason Aldean and Billy Ray Cyrus, as well as celebrities including Amber Rose, Savannah Chrisley, Caitlyn Jenner, Dr. Phil, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Joe Rogan and Lil Pump.
Watch Kid Rock’s reaction to Trump’s election win on Instagram here.
Countless fans are upset with Nicole Scherzinger following a comment she made on Russell Brand’s recent Instagram post, which appeared to celebrate Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election.
Though the Republican president-elect wasn’t mentioned by name in the comedian’s post, Brand did share a photo of himself smiling with a red “Make Jesus First Again” baseball cap — which appears to be inspired by Trump’s famous “Make America Great Again” hats — and wrote “God Bless America” in his caption Tuesday (Nov. 5), the same day the former reality star secured his second term in the White House. In a since-deleted comment, the ex-Pussycat Dolls frontwoman wrote, “Where do I get this hat?”
Billboard has reached out to Scherzinger’s reps for comment.
It isn’t clear whether Scherzinger simply wanted to praise the hat’s religious message or if her comment was intended as an endorsement of Trump, but Brand has been famously outspoken in his support for the polarizing twice-impeached POTUS. In recent years, the Hop star has shifted from acting to a career in conservative political commentary, and immediately after his post with the hat, Brand — who is English, not American — celebrated Trump’s victory on Instagram by writing, “DONALD TRUMP HAS WON THE ELECTION.”
At a time when many of Scherzinger’s peers have been sharing their disappointment over Trump’s win against Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, many fans have taken the former X-Factor judge’s comment on Brand’s post to heart. “Nicole Scherzinger being a trumpie was NOT on my bingo card,” one person tweeted Thursday (Nov. 8).
“If Nicole Scherzinger had really posted this, it had to be the most unbelievably stupid career moment I have ever seen,” another person wrote on X. “It took her 20 years for people to take her seriously & she just ended her career high momentum.”
Other fans, however, expressed wanting to give the “Where You Are” singer the benefit of the doubt. “I don’t think this is Nicole Scherzinger coming out as a Trump supporter—I think she is just an annoying christian,” one person tweeted, while another user wrote, “Nicole scherzinger might be a trumpie but she may also just be Christian and stupid.”
The controversy comes amid a career highpoint for Scherzinger, whose performance in Broadway’s ongoing Sunset Blvd. has earned her both critical praise and an Olivier award. The artist has also been generating Tony buzz, and the show’s soundtrack recently debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Cast Albums chart.
In a recent interview with Billboard, legendary composer and Sunset Blvd. maestro Andrew Lloyd Webber praised Scherzinger’s talents as “one of a kind.” “I don’t think there’s any singer I know who can interpret and act through music in the way that she can,” he added. “I mean, I’ve known some very, very great ones, but she’s absolutely extraordinary.”
The sweeping electoral victory of Donald Trump will change the U.S. government, and the country itself, in ways that no one can yet predict. So far, though, it appears that the music industry will not be affected as dramatically as other businesses.
“I don’t think there will be that much of a change,” said a senior executive at one of the major labels. Partly that’s because music, and copyright, are no longer the hot-button issues they were a decade ago. And partly that’s because, at a time of increased partisan rancor, copyright is one of a few genuinely bipartisan issues, according to a half-dozen executives. Because it brings together Democrats who tend to look favorably on the media business and Republicans who believe in strong property rights, passing legislation often depends more on building a coalition of legislators from both parties.
There are no music companies in Trump’s crosshairs, at least from his own public comments, and he tends to look favorably on entertainers, even when they tend not to return that respect. Indeed, right-wing Republicans have been far more critical of media companies and online platforms than of major labels and movie studios.
The most immediate music business issue before the government is the Department of Justice antitrust case against Live Nation Entertainment, which seeks to break up the company. Trump will appoint a new attorney general to replace Merrick Garland, and that appointee will almost certainly replace Jonathan Kanter, who runs the antitrust division. The future of the case will depend on Kanter’s replacement, and several music executives and antitrust experts said that it’s hard to predict how that person will proceed.
“We congratulate President-elect Trump on his election,” said a spokesperson for Live Nation Entertainment. “Live Nation is proud to help bring joy to fans through concerts, sports and other live events. We look forward to working with the incoming administration to continue driving the positive impacts our industry has on American jobs and local economies.”
Several executives without direct knowledge of the matter speculated that, for optics reasons, the DOJ would be less likely to drop the case than to pursue a low-stakes settlement, but all of them made clear that there was no way to know.
Right now, the big issue in the music business is artificial intelligence, and the industry has been lobbying for the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act, which would protect the voices and likenesses of human creators. The bill was introduced in the Senate in July and the House of Representatives in September. It has sponsors on both sides of the aisle, including Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). (One might presume they do not agree on much else.) The industry is going to push to pass it in the “lame-duck” Congress, before the end of the year, but it will conflict with other priorities, and several executives said that would be a long shot. Otherwise, it will be re-introduced next year, and the changes in government are not expected to affect its chances much.
Some of the policies Trump has said he will pursue, such as tariffs for imports, could be bad for U.S. business on a broader level. This could make physical goods more expensive, especially merchandise, such as T-shirts. It could also make CDs and vinyl more expensive, although only by so much, since they could also be manufactured in the U.S.
It is also possible that changes to the tax system could affect catalog sales, as well as the desirability of songs and recordings as an investment. But it is unclear how much taxes will change — and other economic factors, such as interest rates, are likely to affect investment calculations more.
Lizzo has a message of positivity for followers following Donald Trump’s election win this week. Two days after Election Day ended with the twice-impeached former POTUS securing his second term in the White House, the 36-year-old musician shared a video on Instagram captioned with a simple rainbow emoji Thursday (Nov. 7). In the clip, only […]
Following Donald Trump’s win in the 2024 presidential election, Madonna has taken to her Instagram Stories to share her reaction. On her Stories, the Queen of Pop posted a photo of a yellow and orange cake with “F— Trump” written across the top, surrounded by cherries. “Stuffed my face with this cake last night,” she […]
Jack Antonoff is asking his community to stay strong following Kamala Harris’ losing the 2024 presidential election against twice-impeached convicted felon Donald Trump.
In a heartfelt message addressed “to my people” on X Wednesday (Nov. 6), one day after Election Day, the 40-year-old producer reminded followers, “we turn to each other at the best times as we do at the worst times.”
“our community is alive because we lift and take care of each other,” he continued. “we are not moved by bulls–t. when we’re afraid we lean on each other. right now we are going to do exactly that. we are going to be there for each other.”
Antonoff went on to give fans a meaningful call to action, noting that The Ally Coalition — which he founded in 2013 with his sister, designer Rachel Antonoff, to support LGBTQ youth — will “not rest” in their activism post-election. “do not be cynical,” he wrote. “do not have the conversation alone in your head. go be together. be around those who do not assume the worst of you.”
“fight for the rights of oppressed people,” he added. “respect the earth and its creatures. live with the most dignity and remember that every tiny thing is carried on.”
The Bleachers frontman is one of many artists disheartened by Trump’s return to power, with Ariana Grande, Ethel Cain, Billie Eilish, Cardi B and several more stars all sharing messages of disappointment to social media over the past 36 hours. One of Antonoff’s 2024 collaborators, Sabrina Carpenter, addressed the election results at her Nov. 6 concert in Seattle, telling the crowd: “I hope we can be a moment of peace for you, a moment of safety … sorry about our country, and to the women in here, I love you so so so so so much.”
The former Fun band member has long been open about his dislike of Trump, from joking about the president-elect wearing diapers with Jimmy Kimmel in April to slamming what he called a “Trumpian approach” to spreading false information when Damon Albarn accused Taylor Swift — another frequent Antonoff collaborator — of not writing her own songs in 2022. He’s also spent his career being a fierce advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and recently announced his Public Studios initiative, which will build studios in LGBTQ+ youth shelters and create a network of engineers to train aspiring producers in those communities with the Ally Coalition’s help.
Read Antonoff’s post-election message below.
to my peoplewe turn to each other at the best times as we do at the worst times. our community is alive because we lift and take care of each other. we are not moved by bullshit. when we’re afraid we lean on each other. right now we are going to do exactly that. we are going to…— jackantonoff (@jackantonoff) November 6, 2024