Neil Young is mad today that Donald Trump used his “Rockin' In The Free World” as a campaign song. Assuming that the newly-minted Trump campaign paid ASCAP fees (which I hope they did and if so, hope they continue using the song out of spite), there isn't anything much Young can do but scream and holler in that dying cow fart vocal tonality of his. For years my step dad and several friends tried to persuade me of Young's ”brilliance.” My stepdad is hard of hearing, for what it's worth. I never saw that in Young. His politics were always irrelevant to me because I like the music of some horribly progressive musicians who don't write the same songs over and over and still act like they're brand new works of art. Young triggers me.

Behold, the poetic greatness:

There's a place called Downtown
Where the hippies all go
And they dance the charleston
And they do the limbo
Yeah the hippies all go there
'Cause they want to be seen
It's like a room
full of pictures
It's like a psychedelic dream

Downtown
Let's go downtown
Downtown at night
Downtown
Let's have a party
Downtown at night

One mid-90s summer I was relegated to binge-watching MTV from my sofa due to a broken foot that required elevation when this song came on MTV. I furiously mashed the buttons on the remote to no avail: the batteries were dead. I cried quietly while Young killed my soul and prattled away about dancing hippies. I'm not sure that's an exaggeration.

I'll say this: At least Young stopped talking about “green alternatives” for awhile. I'm more concerned that a presidential contender demonstrated such horrible, awful, no good, very bad taste in music.