The AC/DC song written to mock Donald Trump: “He was big news”
AC/DC was never a band that stuck their nose into societal problems. The whole point of rock and roll was to get away from the mundane things that go on in everyone’s lives, and that normally means making tunes that are about having a good time than wagging their finger at someone for their behaviour. After all, the Australian rockers often got their kicks on bad behaviour, but they had enough sense to realise when they saw someone partying a bit too hard.
But looking at their back catalogue, the fact that AC/DC would make a song of satire is almost laughable. The whole point behind their music was to create the filthiest music ever created, and while it did lead to some clever moments during the Bon Scott era like ‘Big Balls’, it wasn’t exactly rocket science trying to figure out what Brian Johnson was getting at on songs like ‘Let Me Put My Love Into You’.
Throughout every one of their songs, every band member was looked at like an average guy who happened to be in one of the biggest acts in the world. They weren’t willing to flaunt their money all that often, but in the age of excess, they knew that some of the billionaires of the world had started to look absolutely ridiculous.
Because as soon as the 1980s ended, everything started to look really sad for rock and roll. As ‘the age of excess’ would imply, some of the biggest names in music had made the entire concept of rock and roll look like a second-rate circus half the time, and no matter how many times people tried to call their music “tongue-in-cheek”, you would have to take their word with a mountain of salt instead of a grain.
If rockstars lived outside the traditional rules of society, though, the billionaires of the world were the next best thing, and by the time of The Razor’s Edge, no one else seemed more up their own ass than Donald Trump. He may have been one of the wealthiest men in the world at that point, but that didn’t always equate to him being the best person, either, and Angus and Malcolm Young figured they’d have a little bit of fun taking some shots at him on the song ‘Mistress for Christmas’.
Although there’s no abject reference to Trump Tower or anything, Angus remembered the song being a fun piss-take on that type of billionaire who thinks that they are above everyone they come in contact with, saying, “You always have a bit of the ‘ol fool-around now and again. I think the funniest song on this album is ‘Mistress For Christmas’. That song’s about Donald Trump. He was big news at the time, so we thought we’d have a bit of fun and humour with it.”
Looking at the lyrics, it’s clear that none of the bands have the highest opinion of what Mr. Trump is all about. While the title implies that it would be considered a Yuletide carol that can be sung around a fire, the fact that the band paints Trump as the kind of slimy person who only wants a beautiful woman to go to bed with in his stocking on Christmas Eve makes the protagonist look like the kind of person that is more than a little bit desperate for love and perhaps not the greatest companion, either.
AC/DC may have only wanted to have some fun in between making tunes like ‘Thunderstruck,’ but the fact that they got so many things right about Trump in one tune made them look like the hard rock version of Nostradamus. Because if you look at his actions going forward, ‘The Donald’ is willing to be desperately exploitative and denigrating beyond simply sexuality.
