Paul McCartney appeared on the latest episode of “The Rest Is Entertainment” podcast (via The Daily Beast) and touched on Trump’s America when discussing the power of music to bring divided audiences together.
“Particularly these days, you do something like ‘Hey Jude’ and you see this whole audience singing together,“ McCartney said of playing the iconic Beatles song in 2026. ”I mean, in Trump’s America, and the Republicans and Democrats all at each other’s throats — when we do that song, they’re not. They’re all loving it, and it’s like, wow, this is pretty amazing.”
McCartney added, “You know, suddenly this room has forgotten all of that, and it’s not, you know, going to argue with each other, they’re just going to sing together. So those kinds of things, I think, are valuable.”
The Beatles legend played two intimate shows in Los Angeles in March to great fanfare. “Hey Jude” was included on the setlist alongside other classic songs like “Lady Madonna,” “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” “Get Back,” “Let It Be” and “Blackbird.”
McCartney isn’t the only iconic rocker to knock the divisiveness of Trump’s America. Bruce Springsteen is currently on tour and regularly speaks out against the president. Springsteen noted to the Minnesota Star Tribune that he’s playing shows at a time “when the country” is “critically challenged and our basic ideas and values as critically challenged.”
Is the musician worried that his outspoken anti-Trump politics will lose and/or alienate a certain part of audience? “I don’t worry about it,” he told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “My job is very simple: I do what I want to do, I say what I want to say and then people get to say what they want to say about it. Those are the rules of my game. That’s fine with me. I don’t worry about if you’re going to lose this part of your audience. I’ve always had a feeling about the position we play culturally, and I’m still deeply committed to that idea of the band. The blowback is just part of it. I’m ready for all that.”
Watch McCartney’s full interview on “The Rest Is Entertainment” podcast in the video below.
variety.com
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