Talk about spitting the Dummy. Election sinker Katherine Deves last week expressed disbelief that a member of the band Portishead, leading purveyor of glinting cinematic ’90s soundscapes, had reported her on Twitter for the, well, highly Deves view that the word “transphobic” was actually a term of abuse against women.
UK super-producer Geoff Barrow, who had reported Deves, then declared: “It’s quite obvious you never understood the message in our music or perhaps you did back then before became full of hate for trans people. Shame.”
Of course, this is just part of a long and glorious line of politicians attempting to humanise themselves through popular culture and finding that their admiration is not in the least reciprocated. Let’s reminisce.
David Cameron
In 2010, guitarist and reason it’s OK to still like The Smiths Johnny Marr was adamant: “David Cameron, stop saying that you like The Smiths, no you don’t. I forbid you to like it.”
For all the former Tory PM’s declaration of fandom, Cameron would go on to be the first UK PM (that we know of) to put misquoted Smiths lyrics into Hansard.
Donald Trump
In the lead-up to his 2016 victory, Donald Trump’s travelling circus hijacked all manner of hymns for the common man, only to find that almost literally everyone who created that music wasn’t a Trump fan.
You could dedicate an entire piece to artists who’ve sued, threatened to sue or simply distanced themselves from the former president’s use of their music — R.E.M, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Adele, and many many more. Some people talk the talk, but The Rolling Stones went a step further and were remarkably ahead of the curve: Keith Richards reputedly pulled a knife on Trump after a 1989 gig in Atlantic City.
Clive Palmer
When you’ve got roughly $80 million to spend failing to get anyone elected, what’s a further $1.5 million to fail to get the rights to a rabble-rousing ’80s rock anthem? Clive Palmer had attempted to license Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” for his saturation advertising for the United Australia Party in 2019, and baulking at the price, figured he could just do his own Aldi-brand version by changing a few of the lyrics. It put the “awful” in “unlawful” and he was ordered to pay $1.5 million in copyright infringements.
Justice Anna Katzmann wrote in her judgment that Palmer had been “opportunistic”:
He saw political and personal advantage in both its notoriety or popularity and the message it conveyed and he thought that he could get away with using it merely by altering some of the words. He was wrong.
Tony Abbott
It was truly a glorious time in Australian politics — in 2017, the NRL hired well-intentioned Grammy thief Macklemore (a mere five years after the rest of the world had stopped listening to him) to perform his 2012 marriage-equality anthem “Same Love”.
An outcry followed from conservatives who argued that sport ought to be apolitical. Then immigration minister Peter Dutton made possibly his greatest contribution to public debate, arguing that there ought to be an anti-marriage-equality song played at the final too in the interests of fairness. In the midst of this, former PM Tony Abbott confessed he liked Savage Garden, which is pretty funny if you think about it for even a second.
Unsurprisingly, this affection was not mutual. Lead singer/gay icon/marriage-equality campaigner Darren Hayes made it clear: “I am no fan of Tony Abbott.”
