Ariana Grande has once again criticized the Trump administration for featuring her music in a social media post. This time, the Team Trump account shared a TikTok video with Grande’s song “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love)” playing in the background. The video showed clips of President Donald Trump speaking at a podium with text quoting lyrics from Grande’s 2024 track. Grande responded in the comments, demanding that her music not be used by the administration. This incident follows a similar situation in mid-June when Grande objected to her song “Bye” being used in a TikTok video about immigration policy.
Grande joins a long list of artists, including Neil Young, John Fogerty, Queen, The Rolling Stones, ABBA, Beyoncé, and others, who have objected to the Trump team using their music in various campaigns and promotions. Some artists, like Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny, have taken legal action to have their music removed from Team Trump’s social videos due to copyright infringement claims.
While political campaigns can obtain licenses to use music legally, individual artists have the right to opt out of having their music included for personal reasons. Despite this, artists who have not opted out can still voice objections to the use of their music.