Neil Young is suing Donald Trump’s political action committee again for the unauthorized use of “Rockin’ in the Free World,” and this time he’s trying to hit them where it hurts: He’s asking for $10 million in reputational damages.
The complaint pulls no punches in alleging that people could mistakenly believe that Young supports Trump, whom he has criticized for years. It characterizes the song as “a blistering anthem that contrasts the hollow promises of American political rhetoric with the harsh realities faced by the poor, homeless and forgotten.”
“The lyrics paint vivid street-level portraits – a mother discarding her baby, addicts lost in despair, garbage piling in the shadows of prosperity – while the repeated chorus delivers a savage irony, celebrating freedom that clearly isn’t shared by all. In short, the song is the opposite of everything that Donald J. Trump stands for.”
Many people point out that Trump might be a unique personality, but his politics are an extension of the Republican worldview that’s persisted at least since the days of Ronald Reagan. Young wrote the song in 1989, during the first months of George H.W. Bush’s presidency, hence the lyric about “a thousand points of light.” It came about when a planned tour of the Soviet Union fell through, prompting Poncho Sampedro, the guitarist for his backing band, to say, “I guess we’ll have to keep rockin’ in the free world.” It was released on Young’s 1989 album “Freedom” and has since been covered by dozens of artists.
Young filed suit against the Trump people for using the song once before, in 2020, but withdrew it when that campaign’s PAC agreed to stop using the song. Young has since sold a 50% stake in his music catalog, but retained licensing rights for all commercial uses of his songs, so it sounds as if Trump 47 Committee Inc. might have a hard time wriggling off the hook this time.
The electric version of the song closed the album, which opened with this live acoustic version.
