The Perverse Joy of Listening to Trump's Favorite Songs SearchSubscribeMy BookmarksEntertainmentStyleFoodDrinksSportsLifestyleNews & PoliticsArchiveNewsletterAbout UsFollowOther EditionsYour Privacy ChoicesPrivacy NoticeTerms Of UseSkip to ContentEntertainmentStyleLifestyleShoppingNews & PoliticsSubscribesign inSearch'The White Lotus' Is BackSeth Rogen is the BossBest Single Blade RazorsBest Sketches From SNL50The Best Button-Down EverThe Washington Post//Getty ImagesNewsThe Perverse Joy of Listening to Trump’s Favorite SongsThe Perverse Joy of Listening to Trump’s Favorite SongsThis week, he spent forty minutes playing the Village People, Pavarotti, and Guns N’ Roses for a crowd in Pennsylvania. It is baffling and mesmeric, boring and profound. Nothing happens and everything is communicated. By Dave HolmesPublished: Oct 18, 2024 11:34 AM EDTSave ArticleA campaign season that is darker and weirder than anything I’ve ever seen somehow got even weirder this week. I’m certain you heard about it, saw a clip or two, read the headlines: “Trump’s Surreal Musical Town Hall Detour Has Everyone Confused,” “Trump’s Bizarre Turn at Town Hall Has Critics Questioning His Mental Health,” or, from The New York Times, “Trump Celebrates Leonard Cohen, Sinead O’Connor at Expectation-Defying Campaign Event.” (Not really, but not far off.) Here are the broad strokes: On Monday night, Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota joined Trump at a town hall in Pennsylvania. About halfway through the event, Trump commandeered the aux cable and played music for a long and listless thirty-nine minutes, swaying, pointing, and lip-syncing poorly while Noem tried to follow his lead. Have you watched this? Have you really paid attention to each strange, strained moment of this sad American spectacle?It’s baffling and mesmeric, boring and profound. Nothing happens and everything is communicated. What little movement does take place is slow and repetitive. It’s like a screensaver, if your laptop suffered from untreated clinical depression. Allow me to take you track by track through the original cast recording of A Playlist at Democracy’s End. View full post on YoutubeOverture/“People Say Grocery (The Price of Lettuce)” (00:00–38:50)Between the near hour of music and slow, dead-eyed teetering that has America talking, it’s easy to forget that a campaign rally is happening. But it’s true! A crowd of indeterminate size really did show up to a big, hot, unventilated room in Pennsylvania to see him answer their questions with variations on “We’re gonna do a lot of things.” Noem goes from moderator to, later in the night, chaperone. This first chunk by itself would have been considered weird not that long ago. This is the baseline now. It’s going to get a lot weirder. “God Bless America” (38:51–43:40)The crowd has been on its feet for a bit now, probably with its knees locked, and this expo center either does not have air conditioning or, like the man it is currently hosting, does not pay its bills. So it was only a matter of time before someone hit the deck, and that time turns out to be thirty-eight minutes. Trump and Noem don’t “try to assist” so much as “kind of stare at the person impatiently.” YouTube“We are helping.”Trump breaks the silence: “We always have great doctors in the audience, so we’ve never had too much of a problem,” a statement that a fact-checker might want to look into. But it’s the crowd that gets us going with our first song: an impromptu a cappella rendition of Irving Berlin’s classic. Like all a cappella renditions of “God Bless America,” this one is largely mumbling until the “white with foam” part, because pretty much everyone can land the plane from there. “Ave Maria” (43:50–45:54)“While we’re waiting,” Trump says, “maybe the people backstage can get ‘Ave Maria.’ The other day, we had ‘Ave Maria.’ ” The people backstage get that Spotify fired up, and the person who just passed out regains consciousness. The first thing that guy sees is Trump, Noem, and a roomful of strangers staring silently at him while an instrumental hymn plays. I wonder if the guy thought he was dead for a moment. I really wonder where he thought his soul ended up. The guy is escorted out for air by the wonderful first responders, and Noem says, “Thank you, Mr. President.” “Ave Maria (Reprise)” (47:53–52:30)And then someone else goes down. Trump is in the middle of some improvisational word-jazz about the border when the audience has to let him know there’s another medical emergency, this one on the other side of the room. There is more staring. An audience member says, “Turn the air conditioner on—it’s steaming in here.” Trump sends Noem to tell someone to open a door, which maybe would have been a thing to do around forty-eight minutes ago. The same instrumental “Ave Maria” kicks back up, and Trump angrily sends a staffer to the iPod. “The Pavarotti ‘Ave Maria,’ ” he snarls. And then to the crowd: “For security reasons, they can’t open the door, but I say open the door, because if anybody comes in, you know what’s gonna happen to ’em.” Yes, we do: They’re going to pass out. “Ave Maria” (Reprise, with Voice) (53:00–57:40)“If my guys can hear me, put up my chart, my favorite chart,” Trump says, and the crowd goes wild, because this is a crowd that goes wild for someone’s favorite chart. “And then put on the Pavarotti ‘Ave Maria.’ They gave me the ‘Ave Maria’ with no voice.” Pavarotti’s “Ave Maria” comes on. “Turn it up louder,” he demands. “We want a little action here.” And a little action is what we get: Trump mugs to the crowd, and sways a little, and points to the chart, which I guess is about the number of border crossings under the Biden administration relative to the number of border crossings under his own. “That’s for your boy,” he bellows at a guy we met earlier whose son was killed in Afghanistan. I don’t know if Trump means the song or the chart is for the guy’s son, and neither does he, but the guy is psyched. YouTubeA Gold Star father puts his hands in the ay-yerr. Just to interject here: Remember when the organizers of the Paris Olympics had to apologize for a scene in the opening ceremony because the French Catholic Church thought a Dionysian tableau looked too much like Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” and was therefore “a derision and mockery of Christianity”? Remember this week when Gretchen Whitmer had to apologize for feeding someone a Dorito in a TikTok because the Michigan Catholic Conference considered it a mockery of the sacrament of communion? Donald Trump is currently making an audience stand and watch him listen to an operatic version of the Hail Mary, three whole times, in front of a backdrop with his name all over it, in a room so stifling and airless that two people have lost consciousness, while he occasionally points  and gives thumbs-ups to a chart about how many poor, hungry, and desperate people he’s going to keep out of America. I haven’t been a regular churchgoer in a minute, but that feels a little mockery-y to me. Any Catholic organizations want to get on that? Didn’t think so. “Con Te Partiro (Time to Say Goodbye)” (57:45–1:07:45)Here is where the fun, defined here as “lifeless wobbling,” really starts. “Let’s not answer any more questions; let’s just listen to music,” Trump says. “Let’s make it into a music.” He calls for the Andrea Bocelli/Sarah Brightman classic, then he talks for a little bit about how stupid Kamala Harris is, then Noem tries to get him back on track by asking, “Didn’t you want to play your song?” But by this time he has completely forgotten about that. He suggests that he will answer two more questions— “a couple more really beauties” are his exact words—and then they’ll play the song and he and Kristi and Andrea and Sarah and the crowd and the chart will call it a day. Instead of any of that, he talks a lot more, and then someone somewhere hits play on the song that he has now demanded and forgotten about twice in a row, and then he and everyone else just keep standing there. “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” (1:08:05–1:11:35)It is not, in fact, Time to Say Goodbye. Our former president has made a Pandora station based on the prompt “song,” and you’re damn right we’re going to hear it all. What part of “Let’s make it into a music” do you not understand? We get James Brown’s 2002 Paris duet with Luciano Pavarotti, then Trump puts his hands up and sorta creeps forward, the way you do when you’re playing with your dog, except Donald Trump hates dogs, so who even knows what the fuck this is about. YouTubeIn fairness, a dog would hate this right back.The song cuts off halfway through. He says, “We could do another question or two—you wanna do one?” and the crowd cheers in a way that conveys both joy and no. “It ends so beautifully,” he says. “How about this: We’ll do ‘YMCA’ and then we’ll go home.” The crowd agrees, so of course we do not do that: Instead, he rambles some more, calls the Democrats “evil,” and says, “The two people who fell down are great patriots.” “YMCA” (1:12:50–1:17:30)But then, this being a Republican presidential campaign rally, we do finally get to the Village People song about gay sex in the 1970s. The Young Men’s Christian Association used to run gymnasiums and boarding houses in American cities, and as homosexual men in the middle of the twentieth century disproportionately faced post–WWII military discharges and had often been rejected by their families, these venues became important early refuges for the burgeoning gay community, and also you could get laid there. Nobody in this building knows any of this, particularly Donald Trump, who is doing that arm dance that looks like he’s jerking two tall guys off. Trump does attempt to sing along with the chorus, and if you read his lips, it looks like he’s saying, “I ump, so yeah." He does not do the thing at the chorus where you make the letters Y, M, C, and A with your arms. The crowd does, but it’s out of practice, so basically what we are seeing is a lot of white people throwing up a lot of irregularly curved arms. The old Pennsylvania Parentheses. As the song progresses, Trump seems to disassociate. He stares into the middle distance, and he rocks gingerly from foot to foot. It is fair to wonder whether he is in a K-hole, which—credit where it is due— would be another remarkable act of accidental gayness for somebody who is promising to make life considerably worse for the LGB and especially T community. YouTubeAn audience member captures the sizzling hot action.“Hallelujah” (1:17:45–1:21:35)In the only moment of his that I have ever related to, Trump looks out at the crowd and says, “NOBODY IS LEAVING” with a mixture of disbelief and sincere, unmasked disgust. Nobody is leaving, largely because he hasn’t said good night or taken a bow or gone away, and audiences are famous for sticking around until whatever is happening on the stage stops happening. “But turn it up,” he commands whoever. “GREAT song.” And then we’re into the Leonard Cohen classic about the baffled king, and speaking of accidental gayness, it’s the Rufus Wainwright version. He stands there and bops to it, in a way that makes bopping to music look like a chore a child would dread. “Nothing Compares 2 U” (1:21:35–1:27:05)We go right into a live version of Sinead O’Connor’s Prince cover, which is also projected on the video screens, because that’s apparently how you get around the kind of cease-and-desist order O’Connor’s estate has surely sent him. The crowd roars. Two or three times during the song, Trump puts his hands up to chest level and moves them to and fro like windshield wipers, and every time he does, Noem immediately does it, too. Then the moment he stops, she stops. He waves, she waves. She is mirroring him, like a child psychologist would a troublesome third-grade client. Her job is to keep him feeling happy and validated, allowing this event to remain on the benign side of weird. I feel genuine pity for this dog-murdering nightmare woman. YouTubeTwinsies.At this point, my attention drifts to the two jamokes just over Trump’s left shoulder, in the front row of the onstage seats. Both of these guys wear uniquely ill-fitting polo shirts, both polo shirts are tucked into pairs of dress slacks, and both pairs of hands are folded modestly over the buckles of their woven belts. We all know a minimum of thirty of these guys. To be here today, these guys took a break from their job of crowding an airport gate before their boarding group is called. There is a specific bootleg VHS copy of The Hangover out there, and when you’re finished watching it, someone calls you on the phone and says, “Seven days,” and then a week later these guys crawl out of your television and say, “Will we see you at the alumni golf outing?” YouTubeFrick and Fracking over here.By the first chorus, even these guys are staring down at their phones. There are twenty more minutes of this. I think I’m going to pass out. “An American Trilogy” (1:27:20–1:31:24)The next song is Elvis Presley’s 1972 medley of three nineteenth-century songs, the first of which is “Dixie,” the unofficial national anthem of the Confederacy during the Civil War. This would have driven two weeks of cable-news commentary not that long ago. But let’s leave that aside for a moment. Let’s instead consider a hypothetical. Let’s say your dumbest and weirdest friend said, “Come over and listen to some music with me,” and let’s say you did. Let’s say while this playlist of unrelated songs played, he stood there staring at you the way Trump is, rotating 20 degrees back and forth like an oscillating room fan you couldn’t give away for free at your last yard sale. You would have a difficult phone call with that friend’s parents, right? Your conscience wouldn’t let you do otherwise. “Rich Men North of Richmond” (1:31:25–1:34:30)There was no “if” with this song; there was only “when.” There is, however, a truly wonderful moment: When Oliver Anthony sings the line about working bad jobs for bullshit pay, Trump’s eyes light up and he points at the whole crowd, like, “Hey, that’s you!” YouTube“Poverty and tedium? He said your name!”“November Rain” (1:34:30–end)At first, it sounds like the iPod is playing thunderstorm sleep sounds, but then the Guns N’ Roses song starts, and from the way Trump points at the screen out of frame, it’s clear they’re playing the video. He keeps gesturing at it and giving it a thumbs-up, like “Isn’t this great?” and then he goes back to grimacing and moving from side to side, and I ask myself who I’d be more terrified of pissing off: Axl Rose or Sinead O’Connor’s children? All of these people will cut you. “November Rain” is not a short song, so we have the time to take a good look at the former president’s face, now the color and texture of a wet brick of adobe. We don’t know what he is thinking in this moment, because he gives no outward signs that he is thinking in this moment. But the interviews and rallies he has canceled since Monday confirm it: This is the face of a man who has checked out. This is the face of a man who is finished with it, exhausted from trying not to recoil at the sight of the people who show up to these rallies. This is the face of a man who would have a much better time in whatever luxury-ass prison cell he won’t ever see the inside of, and is beginning to realize it. YouTubeCatch the fever.This is also the face of a man who has a decent chance of being elected president of the United States in less than three weeks. Holy fucking shit. God bless America.  Watch Next Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowNewsTrump’s Latest Authoritarian Power PlayOf Course the Migrants Ended Up in PanamaFederal Workers Don’t Exactly Grow on TreesMexico Might Sue Google Over “Gulf of America”Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowHow Will SCOTUS Respond to This Trump Request?DOGE’s Latest IRS Maneuver Is, Flatly, AppallingThese Book Bans Sure Seem Effective!The Trump Administration Can’t Lie Out of ThisWhat in the Mitch McConnell Is Going On?!Wing Nuts in Idaho Are More Wing-Nutty Than EverElon Musk Has Dealt the CFPB a Dishonorable DeathDemocrats Dunked on Marjorie Taylor GreeneAdvertisement - Continue Reading BelowNewsletterAbout UsMedia KitPress RoomContact UsCommunity GuidelinesAdvertise OnlineCustomer ServiceSubscribeOther Hearst SubscriptionsEvents &amp; PromotionsGiveawaysA Part of Hearst Digital MediaWe may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.©2025 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.Privacy NoticeCA Notice at CollectionYour CA Privacy Rights/Shine the LightDAA Industry Opt OutTerms of UseSite MapYour Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads
The fact that every one of the artists or their estates have demanded that he never play them at his rallies.