Neil Young filed a $10 million lawsuit Monday against the Trump 47 Committee, claiming the campaign is using "Rockin' in the Free World" as an entrance theme at midterm rallies, according to Variety. It is the second suit over the same song, and the 2020 settlement that was supposed to end this clearly did not.
The mechanism is the whole story: the campaign plays the song, the singer sues, a settlement gets signed, the campaign plays the song again. Six years between the settlement and the Youngstown, Ohio rally where the entrance theme came back around. The complaint calls the song "the antithesis of everything Donald J. Trump stands for," which is a lot of work for a four-minute track, but the lawyers bill by the bar.
The irony is doing the heavy lifting. A protest song about a president who is rockin' in the free world for himself is now the free world's entrance music, at a rally, on a speaker system. Every time it plays, the lawsuit accrues another data point. The number is $10 million, which is what you ask for when the real injury is that your song now owns a political brand.
The 2018 cease-and-desist letter is the best document in this story, because it shows the whole arc in one page: an 80-year-old songwriter, one email, and a campaign that read it as a suggestion.
YOUR TURN: Does a song survive being played at a rally, or does it become whatever it is stuck with?
PAPER TRAIL
- Filing coverage: Variety
- The 2018 letter: Rolling Stone
- Rally use: Rolling Stone
- The damages math: Billboard
- The complaint, in legal: Courthouse News
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