Until 21 Pilots or whatever releases some deeply moving and eye-opening ballad about Donald Trump, a lot of people are going to continue longing for the great protest singers of yesteryear. As it turns out, Joan Baez herself has actually written a song about Trump, but there’s a very good chance she’ll never release it. Baez dropped that information in the middle of a lengthy Rolling Stone profile, during which she notes that the vicious 2016 presidential race inspired her to write music for the first time in 25 years, but she’s not very happy with her anti-Trump song.
“It’s not a good song, but it will make people laugh,” Baez told Rolling Stone, adding that she’ll “probably just put it on YouTube.” Whether it’s a good song or not, though, Baez says she’s actually a little “grateful” for Trump’s awfulness, since it seems to have shaken her out of a bit of a funk and given her something to stand up against. “When I got resectable,” Baez said, “I got creeped out.”
The rest of the piece avoids Trump, but it does touch on the time Baez got a free iPhone in the mail from Steve Jobs right after he died, what it was like dancing on stage with Taylor Swift, and how she’s working with a vocal therapist to “loosen up her throat.”