• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, September 5, 2024

You might have heard that this week Judge Thomas Thrash (now there’s a name) ordered Donald Trump's Presidential campaign to stop using the song “Hold On, I’m Comin” at his rallies. This was in response to a lawsuit from the family of the co-writer of the song, Isaac Hayes, and his son, Isaac Hayes III.

Hayes died in 2008. But for much of the 1970s, he was considered the heart of soul and funk. “Hold On, I’m Comin” was made famous by the soul duo Sam and Dave in 1966. Then Hayes went on to compose and record the “Theme from Shaft” in 1971, which included such memorable lyrics as “They say this cat Shaft is a bad mother/shut your mouth.”

Hayes’ cool persona – given to wearing beaded tunics and shades – earned him the nickname “Black Moses.”

It turns out that in one courtroom in Atlanta this week, the drama played out between Black Moses and White Jesus (as some Trump followers have referred to him).

In a preliminary ruling, Black Moses won.

"We have to take a stand that we want to separate ourselves from someone with Donald Trump's character," Isaac Hayes III said outside the courthouse, adding that they had repeatedly asked the campaign to desist before suing.

Music licensing and publishing rights are a complicated and murky legal area, and the Trump camp’s M.O. seems to be to ask permission later. 

Ronald Coleman, a lawyer for Trump, said that the campaign had already agreed to "cease further use" of “Hold On, I'm Comin.”

As a result, the Trump campaign has returned to using Village People's 1978 hit song “Y.M.C.A.” as exit music since the lawsuit was filed last month.

But even the Village People sent the Republican candidate’s legal team a cease and desist letter in 2023.

In so doing, they are among a seemingly endless list of top musicians and groups who’ve objected to the former President’s appropriation of their work for his campaign. Among them are Foo Fighters, Celine Dion, R.E.M, Rihanna, Rolling Stones, Phil Collins, Neil Young, Abba, Beyonce, and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few.

Aside from copyright and licensing complications, these artists don’t want their music to be heard as an endorsement of a candidate they abhor.

And here’s the big disconnect: Trump is liberal, and democratic, if you will, in his musical picks, which are completely detached and disconnected from his politics. He’s attracted to  hip hop culture, and likes to be seen with rappers, while his political rhetoric has the unalloyed racism baked in.

In the case of the Village People, his magnetic attraction to “Y.M.C.A.” is quite head-scratching, too, since his politics are not LGBTQ-friendly to put it kindly. JD Vance, his VP pick, also enrages the gay community with his inflammatory statements and his extreme issues with trans-people, “childless cat ladies” and those who don’t hew to Biblical White Christian heterosexual baby-making standards.

Trump on the stump is often seen dancing, in his own way, to “Y.M.C.A.” While crowds traditionally dance to the song spelling out the four letters with arm movements, Trump’s signature move is to extend his arms, slowly, one by one, and pump his fists in time to the music. He’s like a reverse River Dance, moving only the top of his body. 

But before the real estate heir got into politics, he was a semi-regular at places like Studio 54 and the downtown clubs playing disco and catering to gay culture. 

As a hit song, “Y.M.C.A.” immediately became a cultural milestone and gay anthem, with its  lyrics implicitly understood as an invitation to “hang with the boys;” in the early 1970s, the Y facility was known as a hookup place for gay men.

And famously, the Village People bandmembers wore costumes that embodied various gay archetypes. But the almost 50-years-old song’s jubilant, high energy chorus and ultra-danceability has since kept it as a global go-to dance floor number – including for Mar-a-Lago’s event guests.

Of course, there’s always been a disconnect between the use of music in campaigning and the intention of the artist.  Nowhere was this clearer than during Ronald Reagan’s second Presidential campaign in 1984, when Reagan started saluting that New Jersey patriot, Bruce Springsteen, and used his “Born in the U.S.A.” song, released that same year.

Reagan’s campaign wanted to co-opt the song to symbolize the greatness of America and the gift it is to be one of its citizens. The song is actually a bitter and disenchanted ballad about how America failed its Vietnam vets.

Any cursory look at the lyrics proves Bruce’s anti-war views: “So they put a rifle in my hand / Sent me off to a foreign land / To go and kill the yellow man,” Springsteen sings. “I had a brother at Khe Sanh fighting off the Viet Cong / They’re still there, he’s all gone.”  That was 40 years ago.

As with most Trump issues, the backlash to him from musicians is more extreme, and so is the disconnect. There’s always Kid Rock and Lara Trump’s tracks to safely fall back on, but from his time on the Mar-a-Lago dance floor, the former President knows better.