Can musicians force Trump to stop using their songs? It’s complicated, legal experts say

At campaign rallies for former President Donald Trump, attendees have been serenaded by Sinead O’Connor’s signature song “Nothing Compares 2 U.” But the heartbreak ballad may have been blasted from the speakers for the last time.

In a newly released statement, the estate of O’Connor — an Irish musician who died last year — asked that Trump stop using her music at campaign events.

“It is no exaggeration to say that Sinead would have been disgusted, hurt and insulted to have her work misrepresented in this way by someone who she herself referred to as a ‘biblical devil,’” said the statement, published on March 4.

“As the guardians of her legacy, we demand that Donald Trump and his associates desist from using her music immediately,” it said.

It’s just the latest salvo in the long-simmering battle between artists and politicians over music played at public campaign events.

A string of A-list artists have slammed Trump over the years for his use of their music, including Bruce Springsteen, Adele and Phil Collins.

Other politicians have become embroiled with entertainment industry titans as well. In February, Survivor singer Frankie Sullivan criticized Nikki Haley for her use of the band’s hit song “Eye of the Tiger.” And in 2012, Cyndi Lauper chastised the DNC for its use of “True Colors” in an attack ad against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

But do artists have the legal right to force politicians to stop using their greatest hits? Sometimes, but it’s complicated, according to entertainment law experts.

“It’s an interesting legal issue, it’s an interesting political issue in this day and age,” Joseph Salvo, a professor at St. John’s University School of Law, told McClatchy News.

Copyright law

There are two separate copyrights at issue when it comes to campaigns playing music at public events, Salvo said.

“There’s a copyright of the musical work — which is essentially the lyrics and the melody — and there’s the separate copyright of the sound recording,” Salvo said.

Typically, the musical work is owned by the songwriter, often in tandem with a publisher, while the sound recording is owned by the record label.

In the United States, there are only performance rights restrictions over musical work, not sound recordings, Salvo said.

This means that “only the person who composed the underlying music, and not an artist who made a sound recording of someone else’s musical composition, has a performance right,” Peter Nicolas, the director of the Intellectual Property Law & Policy Graduate Program at the University of Washington, told McClatchy News.

“Thus, for example, if a sound recording of Whitney Houston performing ‘I Will Always Love You’ is performed at a political rally, it is only Dolly Parton (who wrote the underlying musical composition) whose performance rights are implicated,” Nicolas said. “Whitney Houston does not have any such rights.”

How are performance rights granted?

Performance rights are granted to campaigns in the form of licenses given by performing rights organizations (PROs), and most composers and their publishers are members, Nicolas said.

Campaigns can reach out to one of these PROs — the largest of which include BMI and ASCAP — to license a musician’s body of work for events.

However, just because a license is granted does not mean it cannot be revoked, Nicolas said.

“Most of the PROs have started to have separate licenses for use at political events that explicitly give the composer the right to withdraw permission to make use of their works once they learn a given politician is making use of them,” Nicolas said.

This means that composers can contact PROs at any time and request that a specific license be taken away — perhaps because they do not wish to be affiliated with a certain campaign, Salvo said.

Consequences

If an artist wants a campaign to stop using their music, they will often simply publicly shame them, Joseph Fishman, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School who researches entertainment law, told McClatchy News.

For example, Rihanna reprimanded Trump for his use of her song “Please Don’t Stop the Music” in 2018, writing on X, formerly Twitter, “me nor my people would ever be at or around one of those tragic rallies.”

“The negative publicity can often be enough,” Fishman said.

Composers who pull their performance rights from campaigns can also issue cease-and-desist letters, Nicolas said.

“Typically, that is enough to get the politician to stop,” Nicolas said.

Still, if campaigns do not comply in the face of a cease-and-desist and in the absence of a license, they could be held liable for “substantial” damages, Salvo said.

“If they can prove that the use after the cease-and-desist letter was willful, they can get damages up to $150,000 per occurrence,” Salvo said.

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