Johnny Marr wants Trump to please, please, please stop playing The Smiths at his campaign rallies
Marr joins a long list of artists including The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Aerosmith, and more who have distanced themselves from the former president
Aux News Johnny Marr
It’s an election year, which means—among other things—that Donald Trump’s Spotify playlist is about to get a lot smaller. In one of his most Veep-adjacent stunts yet, the twice-impeached and many-times-indicted former president played a song by The Smiths ahead of a recent campaign rally in South Dakota, and… well… you kind of have to see it to believe it.
No, this isn’t satire. Trump really did play “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want” before taking the stage to beg for the American people to please, please, please let him eat McDonald’s in the Oval Office again. While we obviously hope that won’t come to pass, we can rest assured that there’s at least one thing 45 definitely won’t be getting again: the rights to use The Smiths’ music.
In a response to the above video, The Smiths founding member and guitarist Johnny Marr expressed his unequivocal disdain for the candidate. “Ahh…right…OK. I never in a million years would’ve thought this could come to pass,” he wrote. “Consider this shit shut right down right now.”
While it must be incredibly jarring to hear your art used in this way, Marr shouldn’t really be all that surprised. Trump has a long history of using artists’ work without their consent, especially if the song has the word “want” in it. Yeah… he couldn’t be more on the nose if he tried. Previous victims include The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way,” as well as work by Neil Young, Elton John, The Village People, R.E.M., Adele, The Beatles, Phil Collins, Queen, and scores of other artists.
Controversial Smiths frontman Morrissey has not commented on the incident thus far. Still, even though he’s ridden pretty hard for Brexit and other xenophobic causes in the past, he has been vocally anti-Trump and once said if he could push a button and kill him he’d do it “for the safety of the human race” (via Variety).
Marr, on the other hand, has never wavered from his principles and really hates it when conservatives stream his work. “David Cameron, stop saying that you like The Smiths, no you don’t. I forbid you to like it,” he wrote on Twitter/X back in 2010. It seems like anyone who’s ever worn, considered buying, or even looked at a red hat should heed the same directive.
31 Comments
I suggest Marr offer “Asleep” as a replacement song
Johnny Marr is a legend.But Morrissey can eat a bag of dicks
He cannot. Dicks are generally not vegan.
Damn it! Well played.
He could eat a vegan guy named Dick.
A Bag of Dicks is Murder.
Is…is this a new Netflix series?
I’ve met a few that are.
I’ll take his work with Matt Johnson over Morrissey every day of the week.
let him play There is a Light at his rallies, at least then we get to think about the delicious prospect of him getting pancaked by a double decker bus
oh, it’s not ‘bigmouth strikes again.’
“Shoplifters (and con men, and perjurers and tax cheats and deadbeats and sexual harassers) of the World Unite and Take Over”
“Smallhands Strikes Again”
I’m not 100% familiar with the law, but do artists actually have a legal standing to stop this? I’m not sure permission is needed to play music at a public event, as long as the venue pays its ASCAP ‘blanket license’ fees (and even if they don’t, a crackdown seems pretty unlikely.)
I’m pretty sure they can’t make a candidate stop playing their music, any more than they can make a radio station or bar or club stop playing it. But many candidates will stop doing it to avoid bad press. Trump doesn’t believe in bad press, and gets a big kick out of pissing people off, so he’ll probably keep using their music.
I doubt Trump really doesn’t believe in bad press considering how often he freaks out at news he doesn’t like.
Yeah, no they can’t stop it. This used to work anyway because it would get into the news cycle so every report would start with “And they’re playing a song that famed music artist, I dunno, Aqua, has said they don’t want played at this person’s rallies, citing that the candidate is “a turbo-fascist, like if you had a giant Hitler costume that took two Hitlers to operate” which has to sting” but that was back when shame was part of this whole enterprise.
It depends on the specific licensing deal. Artists started adding in exclusions for political events back when this started becoming an issue. If the Smiths got theirs revised, he can 100% stop this.
Exactly. Their current contract probably allows it for venue use without restriction. The probably never expected it to be used for a Nazi rally
Knowing Morrissey, it’s probably baroque as hell. Probably can’t be played in venues that serve meat.
Trump is the frontrunner for the presidental election, and heaven knows I’m miserable now.
This is always sort of a dumb complaint. You made a song, people listen to and play the song. You can’t control any of that (as long as they are not selling your work of course) any more than you can control who looks at your art or who uses stuff you invent. And no one out there honestly says “They just played the Smiths, the Smiths must love whomever is playing it!”Just go on with your life. If some reporter is dumb enough to ask if the song means you endorse them you just say “No, of course not.” And yes, Cameron can like the Smiths even if Marr hates him.
Nope. Tell fascists to eat shit every chance you get.
Let’s set aside Marr not wanting trump to play this song because, well, obviously. What the fuck were the trump people thinking? This is a preeetttyyyy downbeat song to be playing at a rally. And I can’t imagine that crowd has enough familiarity to get into it. This has similar vibes to googling something and going with it no matter the context, like the Four Seasons landscaping situation. What a bunch of fucking clowns.
Something about victim complex.
Find 3 words in the chorus somewhere he can use and you’ve got it.
The best is still “which machine did you think we were raging against?” response to Paul Ryan.
Can’t they just play the dueling banjos from Deliverance, Kid Rock songs and that “Not in My Small Town” mess?
Michael Fassbender’s neo-fascist/nihilistic/deranged character in David Fincher’s The Killer also loves the Smiths and plays them during his assassinations. Doesn’t seem like a coincidence (not the fault of the Smiths of course).
Hey, if Morrissey’s cool with it, the campaign DJ could cue up “You’re the One for Me, Fatty” when Trump takes the stage.
I posted before that always thought “Too Bad” by Doug and the Slugs was a good Trump theme song. I heard it shortly after when he lost in 2020 and it fit just so well, despite the song being about a girl finagling men.The song even mentions 45(“Goodbye!”), though the reference is to a 45 caliber gun rather than saying goodbye to President 45.