Neil Young sues Trump committee again over Rockin' in the Free World

A $10m claim over one song

Neil Young has filed a $10m lawsuit against a fundraising committee that supports Donald Trump, over the playing of his 1989 song Rockin' in the Free World at a political rally in Ohio. It is the second time the singer has gone to court over a Trump organisation's use of the track, Nardine Saad reported for the BBC.

The complaint was filed against Trump 47 Committee, Inc. in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Monday 26 October, Mandy Dalugdug reported for Music Business Worldwide, which obtained the five-page filing. It says the song was played without a licence just before Trump took the stage to speak at a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on 12 October.

Trump himself is not named as a defendant. The complaint also lists five unnamed "Doe" defendants, whom Young says he will name once they are identified. The case is brought by Young and his publishing company, Silver Fiddle Music.

As well as damages, Young is asking the court to bar the committee, while the case is under way and permanently, from publicly performing the song or any other composition he owns, and to award him costs and lawyers' fees. The White House referred questions to the Republican National Committee, which the BBC said it had contacted for comment.

Nardine Saad reported this first for BBC News. Checked against BBC News: Neil Young sues Trump campaign again for playing Rockin' in the Free World at rally.

What the lawsuit says

The filing describes the committee as a Virginia corporation that funds and runs rallies urging people to vote for Republican candidates in the midterm elections on 3 November. Trump originally set it up with the Republican National Committee to raise money during the 2024 election cycle, according to Rolling Stone, as Music Business Worldwide reported.

The complaint says the committee had no licence or permission from Young to play the song at the Youngstown rally or at any other public political event. It also alleges that the committee has had the song played "numerous times at other rallies" designed to encourage Republican votes ahead of the midterms.

It goes further, claiming that Trump was personally aware a licence would be needed to play the song at rallies, and that Young "has not, and would not, grant the required licence". The committee, it says, went ahead regardless and did so wilfully.

On the harm, the suit says Young has suffered and continues to suffer "great injury", including "damage to his reputation and brand" because playing the song implies he supports Trump. Laura Snapes reported for The Guardian that the $10m is sought as reputational damages. The filing does not say how the figure was worked out.

"The opposite of everything"

Much of the five-page complaint is given over to the song itself. It calls Rockin' in the Free World "a blistering anthem" that sets the hollow promises of American political rhetoric against the harsh lives of the poor, the homeless and the forgotten.

The lyrics, the filing says, paint vivid street-level portraits of a mother discarding her baby, of addicts lost in despair and of rubbish piling up in the shadows of prosperity, while the chorus delivers a savage irony, celebrating a freedom that clearly is not shared by all. It concludes that the song is "the opposite of everything that Donald J Trump stands for".

David Mouriquand noted for Euronews that Young wrote the track as a comment on politics and American society during the presidency of George H W Bush. The song opens with a line about red, white and blue on the street and people sleeping in their shoes.

The complaint also argues that the song remains hugely popular. It says it has been performed in recent weeks by artists including Roger Daltrey, Lucinda Williams, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, Dave Matthews and Billy Strings, and that Rolling Stone named it Vintage Rock Song of 2026.

Young wrote about the case on his website, Neil Young Archives, the BBC reported. He thanked Trump for coming to so many of his shows in the 1980s and 1990s, but stopped short of letting him play the music. "I am sorry it came to this, but money and transactions are something you understand," he wrote.

The first lawsuit, in 2020

Young first objected to Trump's use of the song in June 2015, when it was played at Trump Tower as Trump announced his first run for president. Young's management said at the time that Trump was not authorised to use it, and that Young, then a Canadian citizen, supported Bernie Sanders, Music Business Worldwide reported. Ben Beaumont-Thomas wrote for The Guardian that Trump dropped the song, saying he "didn't love it anyway".

It came back in 2020. Young sued the Trump re-election campaign, Donald J Trump for President, Inc., in Manhattan federal court in August that year over the use of Rockin' in the Free World and another of his songs, Devil's Sidewalk, at events including a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The suit said Young could not allow his music to be used as a "theme song" for "a divisive, un-American campaign of ignorance and hate".

Earlier that year, in an open letter to Trump, Young had written that every time one of his songs was played at a rally, he hoped Trump heard his voice, the voice of a taxpaying US citizen who did not support him. He had become a US citizen in 2020, while keeping his Canadian citizenship.

How that first case ended is now part of the new one. Young ended it in December 2020 by agreeing to its dismissal with prejudice, which barred the claims from being brought again, and at the time neither side publicly confirmed a settlement, Music Business Worldwide reported. The Guardian has previously described it as voluntarily dismissed.

The new filing says the campaign "asserted no defense and immediately settled shortly after it was served". It says the campaign promised it "would never again use Rockin' in the Free World without a license and permission from Young". No other terms of that settlement are disclosed.

Why a licence matters

In the US, music played at campaign rallies usually needs a public performance licence, even if the campaign has bought a legal copy of the recording, the BBC explained. Because sound recordings there do not carry a general public performance right, permission is needed only from the owners of the song itself, either directly or through a performing rights organisation.

That is why the new suit is about Young's rights in the composition, not any recording. It describes him as the song's writer and co-owner of its copyright, and does not name any other owner, Music Business Worldwide reported.

The size of the claim is unusual. The 2020 suit sought the maximum statutory damages for wilful infringement, which US copyright law caps at $150,000 for each work. Because that cap applies per work rather than per performance, Music Business Worldwide noted, a $10m claim over a single song would need to rest on actual damages or the committee's profits.

A recent case shows how the licensing system can work against a campaign. In February, Trump and the estate of Isaac Hayes settled a copyright lawsuit over the use of Hold On, I'm Coming at Trump rallies. The estate alleged the song had been played at least 133 times between 2020 and 2024. A judge in that case found that the performing rights organisation BMI had told the campaign in June 2024 that the song's owners objected, which in effect removed it from the campaign's blanket licence.

Who owns Neil Young's songs

Young no longer owns all of his songwriting outright. In January 2021 the Hipgnosis Songs Fund bought a 50% stake in his entire catalogue of 1,180 compositions, a deal that industry experts consulted by Music Business Worldwide valued at around $150m.

The stake has since changed hands. Blackstone took Hipgnosis private in 2024, and in 2025 merged it with its other Hipgnosis assets as Recognition Music Group. In July this year Sony Music Publishing completed its purchase of Recognition's whole music rights portfolio, including the Young stake, in partnership with the Singapore investor GIC, Music Business Worldwide reported.

A long running argument

Young has been one of Trump's most persistent critics in music. In 2025 he released Big Crime, a protest song recorded at a sound check in Chicago with his band the Chrome Hearts, which accuses the administration of fascism in its chorus and lyrics, Beaumont-Thomas reported for The Guardian.

In April 2025, before his first European shows in six years, he wrote that he feared he might be barred from returning to the US because of his criticism of the president, Michael Sun reported for The Guardian. "If you say anything bad about Trump or his administration, you may be barred," he wrote.

In January this year, as Trump pressed his claim to Greenland, Young offered everyone in Greenland free access to his online archive. He also restated his decision to remove his music from Amazon Music because of Jeff Bezos's support for Trump, Snapes reported for The Guardian. His CDs and vinyl records stayed on sale there. He described that move as harmful to his record company in the short term but said the message was important.

It is not the first time he has pulled his catalogue in protest. In 2022 he took his music off Spotify over Covid misinformation on Joe Rogan's podcast, then hosted only by Spotify. He returned in 2024, after the podcast also appeared on Apple, Amazon and YouTube, saying his music would otherwise have had very little streaming outlet at all.

Not the only musician to object

Young is one of dozens of acts to object to Trump using their music. The BBC listed the Rolling Stones, Rihanna, Adele, REM and the estate of Prince among them, and Music Business Worldwide added ABBA and the White Stripes.

Mouriquand recalled for Euronews that Bruce Springsteen objected in 2016 to Born in the USA being played as a patriotic anthem, when the song is a bitter account of how Vietnam veterans were treated, and that Leonard Cohen's estate criticised the use of Hallelujah at the 2020 Republican convention after refusing permission.

Snapes wrote for The Guardian that in the past 12 months the Trump presidency had used songs by left-leaning musicians, including Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter and SZA, to soundtrack videos promoting immigration enforcement or its strategy in Iran. In August, Taylor Swift's song August was removed from a video celebrating the Trump presidency.

Young has also shown that permission is his to give. When Tim Walz left the stage at the Democratic National Convention in 2024 to Rockin' in the Free World, a campaign official told CNN that Young had personally approved the use of the song, Beaumont-Thomas reported for The Guardian.

Still touring at 80

Young is 80 and still releasing records at a steady rate. Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts released the album Second Song on Reprise in September, a year after Talkin to the Trees. Reviewing it for The Guardian, Alexis Petridis singled out its 11-minute title track as a late song that stands comparison with his best work.

In 2025 he headlined Glastonbury and played BST Hyde Park on his Love Earth tour. Ahead of that tour he said he would stop offering Ticketmaster's higher-priced Platinum tickets at his shows, crediting the Cure's Robert Smith, and called dynamic pricing a "bad thing that has happened to concerts worldwide", Beaumont-Thomas reported for The Guardian.

His European tour this summer was announced to open at the Eden Project in Cornwall on 17 June, with Elvis Costello and the Imposters supporting on some dates, The Guardian reported in January.

No new Neil Young dates are listed at the moment. If he announces more shows, they will appear on our Neil Young page, where you can set an alert to get an email when new dates are listed.