Eric Trump Complains That Apple is ‘Viscously Shadow Banning’ His Wife’s ‘New Song’ — A Cover of a Tom Petty Hit

Phillip NietoSep 29th, 2023, 2:02 pm
 

Eric Trump

As his father faces four criminal indictments and his family’s business fights a fraud ruling in New York, Eric Trump took to social media on Friday to claim that Apple is “shadow banning” his wife’s “new song.”

Earlier this week, Lara Trump, who has a passion for singing and piano, recorded and released a cover of Tom Petty’s 1989 hit song “I Won’t Back Down.” Her song’s cover picture showed the Republican firebrand wearing a dress on horseback.

On Friday, she and Eric and posted on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) to accuse Apple of actively working to hide the popularity of the song by “shadow banning” it. The term is used to describe online content that is deliberately suppressed by a social media company to deny it engagement.

She tweeted to her over 1 million followers, “Hey, Apple — where is my song??? Why doesn’t my song appear when you search ‘I Won’t Back Down’???”

Eric Trump weighed in with his own tweet, writing a typo-riddled message, “Breaking: Apple appears to be viscously shadow banning Lara Trump’s new song, which immediately upon release, was 31st on the ITunes charts. Lara’s name, when typed in full, is hardly viable and can only be found below ‘Fake News II.’ The song itself is unsearchable.”

Typically in order to find the latest release of a song quickly on iTunes, users usually only need to type in the song’s name for it to appear. In this case, however, Lara Trump’s song isn’t an original, but a cover of a still-popular song made famous by another artist.

“I Won’t Back Down” was the lead single from Petty’s first solo album, Full Moon Fever. It hit number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, stayed on top of the Mainstream Rock charts for five weeks, and helped launch the album into multi-platinum status.

The song got another burst of popularity after Petty’s death in 2017 when the Florida Gators football team in his hometown of Gainesville, Florida began a new tradition of playing the song between the third and fourth quarters.

Lara Trump’s cover arguably isn’t even the most notable cover of the song. Johnny Cash included “I Won’t Back Down” on his 2000 album American III: Solitary Man, with Petty himself contributing vocals and guitar to the track, and Jason Aldean played it on a 2017 episode of Saturday Night Live as a tribute to Petty and the Las Vegas shooting victims. Other artists who have covered the song include The Goo Goo Dolls, Everclear, Kris Kristofferson, and O.A.R.

Apple has not responded publicly to the Trumps’ accusations.

Eric and Lara Trump are unlikely to get any support from Petty’s estate. In June 2020, the family of the late rocker sent a cease and desist letter to then-President Donald Trump’s campaign over its use of the song at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“Trump was in no way authorized to use this song to further a campaign that leaves too many Americans and common sense behind,” the letter said. “Both the late Tom Petty and his family firmly stand against racism and discrimination of any kind. Tom Petty would never want a song of his used for a campaign of hate. He liked to bring people together.”

“Tom wrote this song for the underdog, for the common man and for EVERYONE,” the letter continued. “We want to make it clear that we believe everyone is free to vote as they like, think as they like, but the Petty family doesn’t stand for this. We believe in America and we believe in democracy. But Donald Trump is not representing the noble ideals of either. We would hate for fans that are marginalized by this administration to think we were complicit in this usage. Concurrently, we have issued an official cease and desist notice to the Trump campaign.”

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