Donald Trump Tried To Rewrite The O'Jays' 'Love Train' To Praise Himself
Donald Trump has a number of long-running feuds within the music biz over his unauthorised use of various artists' music at his campaign rallies. Rihanna, Pharrell, Neil Young, George Harrison's estate and the Rolling Stones have all tried to get him to stop playing their tunes, with varying degrees of success.
Now it turns out that Trump went one step further and hoped to rewrite artists' songs to celebrate his presidential campaign in 2016. According to the O'Jays' Walter Williams, Trump attempted to rewrite the lyrics to the group's most enduring hit, 'Love Train', to praise himself.
"Yeah, he wanted to change the words to 'Trump Train'", Williams told the Guardian. "We had to send him a cease-and-desist letter."
Sadly we don't have any more detail on the proposed new Trump-centric lyrics beyond that - or whether he intended to rerecord the new words himself and release it as a single - but it's safe to assume it would at least have extended to something like: "People all over the world / Join hands / Start a Trump train, a Trump train".
That said, a lot of it scans quite nicely as is. "The next stop that we make will be soon / Tell all the folks in Russia, and China, too" works, though the line about "all of you brothers in Africa" could do with a radio edit-friendly reworking of Trump's "s***hole countries" remark to really appeal to to the base.
It's not even the first time Trump's jumped on an O'Jays track either, having co-opted 'For the Love of Money' (sample lyrics: "For the love of money, people will steal from their mother, for the love of money, people will rob their own brother... I know money is the root of all evil") for the theme tune to The Apprentice.
"I don’t think he really listened to the lyrics," Williams' fellow O'Jay Eddie Levert noted to the Guardian.
('You Might Also Like',)
