Musicians are coming together for 30 Days, 30 Songs: Written and Recorded by Musicians for a Trump-Free America, a project formulated by Dave Eggers to protest everyone’s least favorite Republican presidential candidate/rotting jack-o’-lantern, Donald Trump. Proceeds from the compilation—which includes songs from Aimee Mann, Death Cab for Cutie and My Morning Jacket—will go to the Center for Popular Democracy.
According to FACT magazine:
Eggers started the project after attending a Trump rally in Sacramento for The Guardian: “While the audience was waiting for Trump to appear, I was pretty surprised to hear music by Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and Queen,” Eggers explains. “None of these musicians support Trump, of course, so it occurred to me that this election would benefit from the timely resurrection of the political protest song.”
Two of the 30 songs have been released. Mann’s “Can’t You Tell” (posted above) and Death Cab for Cutie’s “Million Dollar Loan,” which, according to frontman Ben Gibbard:
...deals with a particularly tone deaf moment in Donald Trump’s ascent to the Republican nomination. While campaigning in New Hampshire last year, he attempted to cast himself as a self-made man by claiming he built his fortune with just a ‘small loan of a million dollars’ from his father. Not only has this statement been proven to be wildly untrue, he was so flippant about it. It truly disgusted me. Donald Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he is unworthy of the honor and responsibility of being President of the United States of America, and in no way, shape or form represents what this country truly stands for. He is beneath us.
Of Mann’s song, which is written from Trump’s perspective and begins with “That bastard making fun of me in front of all my peers/Those people think I own this town, you’re stripping all my gears/Well guess what, Mr. President, I’ll be seeing you in four years,” she says:
“I wanted to write about Trump in the first person because I think it’s more interesting to speculate on what people’s inner life might be. I had heard a theory that Trump’s interest in running for President was really kicked off at the 2011 White House Correspondent’s dinner when President Obama basically roasted him, so that’s where I started. And my own feeling was that it wasn’t really the job itself he wanted, but the thrill of running and winning, and that maybe it had all gotten out of hand and was a runaway train that he couldn’t stop.”
28 songs to go.