Todd Rundgren and Donald Fagen Take on Donald Trump in Video for ‘Tin Foil Hat’
Todd Rundgren pulls no punches as to his feelings about President Donald Trump and the right-wing media in "Tin Foil Hat," a song from White Knight that was co-written with Donald Fagen of Steely Dan, who sings lead. You can watch the video above.
The clip imagines a news broadcast on WAPE hosted by "Bill O'Rangutan," a not-at-all-thinly veiled shot at former Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly. As Fagen sings about Trump (sample lyric: "He hasn't got the time for losers / Unless they do as he commands / He's writing checks to his accusers / With his tiny little hands"), the crawl delivers lines like "W.H. advisor Steve Bannon rescued from dumpster" and "What the hell kind of name is [Chief of Staff] 'Reince Priebus'?" Perhaps not coincidentally, the shuffle rhythm of "Tin Foil Hat" is reminiscent of Steely Dan's "Chain Lightning," a song about attending a fascist rally.
Earlier this month, Rundgren spoke of working on "Tin Foil Hat" with Fagen. “The song was primarily driven by our common frustration with what happened in the recent election," he said. "It was still pretty fresh, and we were still pretty mad about it, so it happened pretty organically.”
In the same interview, Rundgren added, "If you’re a Trump supporter, don’t come to my show, because you won’t have a good time. And also, I don’t understand your frickin’ values. Because I’m not singing about that. If you don’t understand that basic thing, you’re just fooling yourself. I guarantee that in this show, if you’re a Trump supporter, you will likely be offended. Let the buyer beware! I mean, if you can’t take a joke, or you can’t admit that you’ve made a mistake, you don’t belong with the rest of us.”
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