Last year I started working on a music playlist about Donald Trump, in the form of a story which wasn’t specifically Trump, but about a Trump-like character who appears out of nowhere, creates his own cult of personality, gets elected President, and then proceeds to totally fuck shit up and potentially bring about the Apocalypse – very much like my Sarah Palin playlist from years back, with enough poetic license to make it more flexible & interesting. The project eventually got away from me and stalled, for reasons including the fact that I just don’t listen to that much political music. But lately I’m thinking of trying to start up the project again.
Here’s most of the songs I’ve included so far, broken down into “chapters” of the story:
[Backstory]
Led Zeppelin “The Song Remains the Same”
The Beatles “A Day in the Life”
Talking Heads “Once in a Lifetime”
U2 “Bullet the Blue Sky”
Kim Wilde “Kids in America”
Triumph “American Girls”
John Cougar Mellencamp “Pink Houses”
**
[The Candidate]**
ZZ Top “Sharp Dressed Man”
Don Henley “Dirty Laundry”
Anthrax “The Enemy”
Stone Temple Pilots “Sex Type Thing”
Soundgarden “Hands All Over”
Porcupine Tree “Hatesong”
Iron Maiden “The Man Who Would Be King”
Motörhead “Orgasmatron”
[The Election]
16. Arcadia “Election Day”
17. U2 “Sunday Bloody Sunday”
18. Pain of Salvation “America”
19. Redemption “The Death of Faith and Reason”
20. Blue Oyster Cult “Madness to the Method”
21. Grateful Dead “Hell in a Bucket”
[Hey Look, A Wall]
Genesis “Illegal Alien”
America “The Border”
Pink Floyd “The Wall (side one, minus “Mother”)”
John Cougar Mellencamp “Crumblin’ Down”
The Firm “Tear Down the Walls”
Loudness “Black Wall”
Testament “Over the Wall”
Willie Nelson “Hello Walls”
The Call “The Walls Came Down”
Pink Floyd “The Trial / Outside the Wall”
[plus a bunch more songs about Walls…this is where it got away from me]
[Healthcare? What Healthcare?]
D.R.I. “Nursing Home Blues”
UFO “Doctor Doctor”
Humble Pie “I Don’t Need No Doctor (live)”
[Destroying the Enviroment]
Kansas “Death of Mother Nature Suite”
[Revolution, maybe?]
David Bowie “Look Back in Anger”
Queensryche “Revolution Calling”
Rage Against the Machine “Take the Power Back”
[Apocalypse…]
Pink Floyd “In the Flesh / Run Like Hell”
Mastermind “The End of the World”
The Doors “The End”
The Beatles “Abbey Road Medley (incl. “The End”)”
Remember this is semi-fictional and mostly metaphorical, so silly suggestions are fine. (In particular I’m looking for songs about the President randomly firing members of his Cabinet, but haven’t been able to find any.) Please, no R.E.M. songs.
“Death on Two Legs” by Queen.
“Sympathy For the Devil” by the Stones.
“The Number of the Beast” by Iron Maiden.
“Two Minutes to Midnight” by Iron Maiden.
“Highway to Hell” by AC/DC.
At the very end, the third movement of Piano Sonata No. 2 by Chopin (aka the Funeral March).
ETA: Listen to the lyrics of Death on Two Legs…I swear, Freddie and Brian May were prophets.
Radiohead - “Creep” (about the self-loathing nature of extremist politics, especially authoritarian/xenophobic extremism)
R.E.M. - “First We Take Manhattan” (first person to tell me I should put Leonard Cohen here gets my hastily-rewritten version of “Creep”)
Bruce Springsteen - “Born In The U.S.A.” (this wasn’t in your Backstory why wasn’t it in your Backstory already)
The Madden Brothers - We Are Done just has to be somewhere in that mix. And not just because the mondegreened version is my own private trumpy anthem (“dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, he R dum”)
ETA: For the disappearing staffer section - Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust”
“Born in the U.S.A.” and “Fortunate Son” are too cynical for the backstory section, which I want to give a more idealized, romanticized image of America. But you’re totally right about “Cult of Personality”, though – how could I miss that? D’oh!!
I’ve listened to this a few times and I’m having trouble getting into it. Thematically it’s perfect, so I’ll try and squeeze it in somehow.
Another great choice, and balances with “Illegal Alien”. Perfect!
