It is hard to know what we should expect from Donald Trump’s Difficult Second Album. There are clues, of course—the tech bromances, the Department of Government Efficiency, the covetous glances at Greenland. In cultural terms, there are hints too: the choice of TV experts for cabinet positions; the appearance of Sylvester Stallone at a Mar-A-Lago event late last year; and Trump’s recent praise for Ike Perlmetter, the former chair of Marvel Entertainment, whose opposition to movies with black or female leads has made him something of a hero among the anti-woke brigade.
Were you to consider the list of performers who played over Trump’s inauguration weekend, from Carrie Underwood (pictured) to Rascal Flatts, via Jason Aldean and Billy Ray Cyrus, you might also draw conclusions about the kind of America he hopes to create in his second presidency. Setting aside the Village People and tenor Christopher Macchio, there is a choir from an evangelical university set up by a TV preacher, and a preponderance of country artists.
While country is a rich and varied genre, the country music that sells best—and country sells staggeringly well in the US, its growth now eclipsing that of pop and rap—is the kind that upholds a romanticised notion of America. As avowed Stetson-wearer Brad Paisley once put it: “It ain’t hip to sing about tractors, trucks, little towns and Mama… But this is country music, and we do.”
It’s always insightful to look at Trump’s relationship with music. Over the years he has spoken broadly on the subject, from claiming that he once punched his music teacher to his unexpected respect for the composer Steve Reich.
Last year, Politico reporter Meridith McGraw published Trump in Exile, exploring the 45th (and now 47th) president’s inter-White House years—the paranoia, the rebuild, the golf—and titled each chapter with the name of a favourite Trump song. It’s a strange list. The artists are all white and predominantly male. There is a lot of Elton John. Spend long enough in its company (and believe me, I have) and you start to notice the recurrence of certain themes: resilience, nostalgia, longevity, wanting.
The artists are all white and predominantly male. There is a lot of Elton John
Betty Buckley is a rare female voice, singing “Memory” in the original New York production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. Trump’s love for Broadway musicals has been well documented; one member of his entourage was said to have the responsibility of playing show tunes to soothe the president’s rages. In the wake of this revelation, the New Yorker dispatched Adam Gopnik to discover Buckley’s feelings about being the president’s leading pacifier. Buckley speculated that in her interpretation of Grizabella—the once-glamorous feline now in mangy decline—Trump might have admired a certain sense of dignity and steeliness, despite her reduced circumstances.
More, she wondered whether the sentimentality of “Memory” might have appealed to his unmet longing for paternal approval. “In his heart of hearts there’s this tremendous need, an insatiable need, to be loved, the love that he never received from his father or mother,” she said.
Also on McGraw’s chapter list is Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long”, and it’s this song that might prove most illuminating for the coming years. Kid Rock, a Michigan artist of particularly American appeal, is an avowed and vocal Trump supporter. His music presents an amalgam of styles, namely rap, Southern rock and country, and his public image sits somewhere between trailer trash and good old boy—he has been known to describe himself as a “redneck pimp”.
“All Summer Long” is one of his biggest hits and samples tracks by Warren Zevon, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Bob Seger for its tale of deeply American yearning—for the easy-living days of adolescence, young love and mild experimentation. “Sipping whiskey out the bottle / Not thinking ’bout tomorrow,” it runs. “Singing ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ all summer long.”
It’s a less plucky song than some of Trump’s other picks, although the reference to Skynyrd’s 1974 hit stakes out a little territory—the band wrote “Sweet Home Alabama” as a riposte to the perceived condescension in (Canadian) Neil Young’s “Southern Man” and “Alabama”, and its lyrics nod to the hypocrisies of the elite.
It’s a touchstone for Kid Rock, a shorthand for the particular kind of patriotism his song advances—in which playing rock ’n’ roll and making love to your sweetheart by a Michigan lake is pretty much swearing allegiance to the flag. And to understand it is to comprehend, perhaps, the dreams of more than 77m Trump voters: in which the sweetness of yesterday eclipses all thoughts of tomorrow, and the days never end in a perpetual summer.
