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Trump The Music Industry

Five big, luxurious ideas to make music great again, from the bigoted blowhard himself

By Jeff Johnson

If and when Donald Trump is elected 45th President of the United States, pop culture is poised to change in some pretty monumental ways. In order to examine them, we spoke with some very reliable, not at all imaginary sources about Mr. Trump’s views on the music industry. Here are five of his most radical ideas.

Mariah Carey Sweatshirt Day

Presidential decree, day one. Over 75,000 sweatshirts have already been manufactured, in many sizes. They’re incredible sweatshirts. Done with an airbrush-kinda graphic, you know, the one Mariah brought back in the early aughts? They have Mariah’s face on them. She’s a national treasure; you’d be a moron not to put one on. Anyway, they commemorate Mariah Carey Sweatshirt Day, like we all should be doing. Which is going to be May 9th. Some of the sweatshirts say March 9th — doesn’t matter. Point is, we should all wear one of these sweatshirts, any day of the year. Chop the sleeves off if you want, that’s not my business. Her organization is going to sell them to you guys. We’re going to sell them to her team. It’s gonna be great. But if her team won’t pay us for them, there’s gonna be a lawsuit. It won’t be pretty. We’re trying to help, and it’s insane for her not to do this. I could have done this for Blake Shelton in a heartbeat. And if this goes well, I will.

Put My Son Eric in Charge

Eric knows music. Look at his face: It’s in his bones! So he’s going to take on the troubled career of Jimmy Eat World. It’s sad. They’re sad. Jimmy Eat World are a U2-caliber act that’s just had terrible, horrible, awful luck. They should be on a Coldplay level — who, by the way, don’t get me started on them, Chris Martin has begged me to put him in touch with Eric — a Maroon 5 level or even a Train level, and they’re stuck on, like, I don’t know what. So Eric will manage them. First thing I am going to do is call Jerry Jones. I’m going to get them into ATT Stadium, Dallas Cowboys Stadium, and they’re gonna do a month there, sold out. They’re going to fill it, 30 nights in a row, ’cause people need to hear their message. It’s inspirational. Important. I see Joel Osteen potentially introducing them. Gucci Mane would love to open for them. I’ve gotten so many texts. You should see the texts I’ve been getting! I hear from Justin Vernon six, seven times a week. And if Jimmy Eat World fail, they’re done. We’re done with them. ’Cause if you listen closely, their music is actually kind of derivative. But Eric knows. It’s Eric's deal. I’m going to be running a country. Sorry. He’ll probably hook the singer up with the Chainsmokers. They’ll do a song, and if it’s not #1 later that week, it will be over. We tried. Eric is the real deal, though.

Physical MP3s: Start Printing ’Em

What is music anymore? Something’s going on, I’ll tell you that. People want to hold on to a picture and fiddle with something while they listen. It’s human nature, and if you don’t get that, it’s sad. So we put music back in packages, and all of a sudden we have brick-and-mortar stores again, we have the paper industry up and running again. Plastic, too. I know Tim Cook, I’m going to put him on this. He can even say it’s his idea. It doesn’t matter. You will buy physical MP3s at Apple stores and everywhere else, too. And yeah, we won’t stop using the web. Because the physical MP3 won’t actually be the song, okay? There might be a MIDI version of the song on there — a really nice one, believe me — but the physical MP3 will be actually be a flash drive kinda thing that you plug in, and that takes you to a secure website where you order the song. And that comes to you in the mail on another flash drive. It can’t be copied. So we’re done with piracy.

More Contests

Okay, so your band has built a following, enough so that you can roll into Cincinnati and play a show on a Saturday night. Well, listen: That’s not good enough. In fact, that’s a loser mentality. There’s a ton of people in Cincinnati who have never heard of you. They might love you, but they’ll probably hate you — who knows? So I'll tell you what's gonna happen. Before you ever get to your nightclub gig, you’re going to the mall, where Nick Lachey, along with a crowd of people from Cincinnati, will decide if you get to play your gig. If they don’t think you’re talented, you’re not. You pay the nightclub what they would have paid you — that's how this works, no exceptions. And then you apologize, and you leave town. Club owners will love this. There will be other big names in other cities, all waiting to judge you. Tyga. Sia. Rihanna is dying to do this — she wants to pause everything else, career-wise. Peter Cetera. Diplo. Gene Simmons. Mike Love. I can get Steven Tyler in a second. So that’s how touring works now. I will rent amps to people, too. Good amps. Backline. In every state.

Slovenia Swap

You look at where my beautiful wife Melania is from, and you see the unreal amount of money some of these people are willing to pay to get actual Western musicians there. Slovenia, I think. They’re starving for it. So Nicki Minaj will do a camp there, teaching kids music. Next summer. Probably be a TV show, too, at some point. But, okay, Nicki’s going. She has asked me to make it happen for years. I already looked at the numbers. The pay is phenomenal. She won’t see it the first year because of start-up costs, but if she does the camp for five, 10 years, it will make her very rich. This is a very, very good deal. In exchange, we’ll take a couple of their people, too. Probably teach guys like Ed Sheeran a thing or two. I’ve heard he’s not American, but if he wants to sell music here, he’s going to have to commit to living with these Slovakian producers. Talented guys. Probably in a condo in Salt Lake City for a year minimum. The music they make together will be lights-out. Nothing will touch it.

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