Stephen Colbert & Jack Black Made A Political Anthem So Candidates Can Stop Pissing Off Rock Stars
In theory, choosing a campaign song should be easy; a presidential candidate should always select a song that sends a message like “this is the best country ever, but there is still work to be done.” Unfortunately, most musicians aren’t necessarily interested in being an asset to a candidate’s political agenda, particularly when they fundamentally disagree with everything that the candidate stands for.
Such is the case with Donald Trump, who’s been called out a few times already this year for choosing songs written by people who hate him. R.E.M. told Trump to go fuck himself when he used “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It” as a walk-in song during a campaign rally, and even earlier this year, Neil Young and his management accused Trump of using the song “Rockin’ In The Free World” without permission. Even Steven Tyler of Aerosmith (who Colbert kindly refers to as a “frontman and root vegetable”) requested that Trump please stop using “Dream On” as a campaign song, even though the two are supposedly friends.
A lot of musicians, from Billy Corgan to Speedy Ortiz, are fairly convinced we are 100 percent fucked if this guy becomes president, so who the hell wants to soundtrack the end of the world as we know it? Stephen Colbert and Jack Black really do. The two performed a brand-new campaign song about how fucking great the United States of America really is that any candidate is allowed to use without repercussion. This isn’t the first campaign song that comedians have written for the upcoming election; back in August, Conan O’Brien commissioned Aimee Mann and Ted Leo to write a song for the confounding Democratic candidate Lincoln Chafee. At the time that the song was written, Chafee was polling at 0 percent (and if you watched the debate the other night, then you know why). Check out Colbert and Black’s rendition of “My Kind Of America” below.