Neil Young

At a time when most major artists are holding their lyrical fire when it comes to protest songs taking on the norm-smashing Trump administration, as always, Neil Young is saying the quiet part out loud. Very loud, in fact, on his latest broadside against Donald Trump and his MAGA-fication of Washington, “Big Crime.” The song from Young and his Chrome Hearts band that dropped on Thursday (Sept. 4) was recorded live at a soundcheck at the group’s Chicago-area show last week and pointedly uses some of Trump’s own catchphrases and recent actions to decry what many have deemed the autocratic-like actions of the current administration. “No more great again/ No more great again/ There’s big crime in DC at the White House,” Young wails over the stomping, grungy track that opens with a flip of Trump’s signature Make America Great Again slogan before moving on to slamming the president’s recent move to flood the streets of the nation’s capital with armed troops to fight what the White House has claimed is a crime epidemic in the city. “Don’t need no fascist rules/ Don’t want no fascist schools/ Don’t want soldiers on our streets/ There’s big crime in DC at the White House,” sings Young, 79, who has been a stalwart protest song singer for more than half a century, dating back to 1970’s CSNY Kent State massacre anthem “Ohio.” “That is happening all the time now. Countries have new advice for those returning to America … If I come back from Europe and am barred, can’t play my USA tour, all of the folks who bought tickets will not be able to come to a concert by me,” Young worried at the time. “That’s right folks. If you say anything bad about Trump or his administration, you may be barred from re-entering USA if you are Canadian. If you are a dual citizen like me, who knows? We’ll all find that out together.” Young has hit out at Trump a number of times in the past, including when Trump used Young’s 1989 protest against injustice anthem “Rockin’ in the Free World” during first White House run in 2015-2016; Young sued Trump over his use of that song and “Devil’s Sidewalk” during the president’s failed 2020 White House bid, dropping the suit after Trump lost to President Joe Biden. After obtaining his American citizenship in 2020, Young wrote a scathing open letter to Trump, calling him a “disgrace to my country .” In May of this year, Young against vented his anger against Trump, slamming him for being “out of control” following the president’s digs at Bruce Springsteen (“highly overrated… dumb as a rock”) and Taylor Swift (“no longer ‘HOT'”). “Bruce and thousands of musicians think you are ruining America,” Young wrote at the time. “You worry about that instead of the dyin’ kids in Gaza. That’s your problem. I am not scared of you. Neither are the rest of us. You shut down FEMA when we needed it most. That’s your problem Trump. STOP THINKING ABOUT WHAT ROCKERS ARE SAYING. Think about saving America from the mess you made.” Want to know what everyone in the music business is talking about? Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you, the publisher or the advertiser may encounter in the delivery of content and ads and in your interaction with them. The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices. Your device might be distinguished from other devices based on information it automatically sends when accessing the Internet (for instance, the IP address of your Internet connection or the type of browser you are using) in support of the purposes exposed in this notice. Information regarding