Lots of artists have protested the use of their music by the Trump regime, but the British band Radiohead put their objection more bluntly than most after “Let Down,” a track from their seminal 1997 LP “OK Computer,” turned up in an ICE video.
“We demand that the amateurs in control of the ICE social media account take it down. It ain’t funny, this song means a lot to us and other people, and you don’t get to appropriate it without a fight.
Also, go fuck yourselves … Radiohead.”
“Let Down” is a downbeat song; ICE used it in a montage of victims of violence at the hands of immigrants. Whoever chose it probably didn’t realize that Thom Yorke said the lyrics are about “sentimentality … being emotional for the sake of it. We’re bombarded with sentiment, people emoting. That’s the let down, feeling every emotion is fake. Or rather, every emotion is on the same plane whether it’s a car advert or a pop song.”
At this point one could assemble a rather long playlist by artists who have told the administration to fuck off without using that exact language. It includes such disparate artists as Celine Dion, Bruce Springsteen, Linkin Park, Neil Young, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter and Kesha.
Odd, isn’t it, that they never use the music of Trump-aligned acts like Kid Rock and Nicki Minaj, who not only wouldn’t object but could probably use the royalty money given the sorry state of their careers.