Hoodoo Gurus take aim at Donald Trump in single Hung Out to Dry
The US president is a ‘disgrace’ says singer Dave Faulkner.
Dave Faulkner was energised by his anger when he began writing a song that takes aim at president Donald Trump, and with four decades of experience behind him, the Hoodoo Gurus frontman knew it was best to be blunt.
“As a songwriter, I hate songs that sound like editorials,” said Faulkner. “I wanted to make it personal, because that’s much more interesting as a writer.”
Named Hung Out to Dry, the Sydney rock band’s new single is certainly direct. “Don’t you love yourself? / Yeah, you really love yourself,” Faulkner sings in its second verse. “Think of no one else / It’s all you’ve ever felt.”
Faulkner began writing the music about 20 years ago, but it was only while watching the US president’s poor public response to the COVID-19 health crisis in recent months that he found the impetus to put pen to paper.
“There’s been no leadership on this issue, and it’s all because Trump doesn’t want it to affect his re-election,” said the singer-songwriter. “He just wanted to talk about himself and his election, which appalled me: people are dying. Over 100,000 of those deaths, I’m certain, are needless. They didn’t need to happen.
“The fact that anyone believes this man after the way he contradicts himself, and flat out lies or speaks gibberish, is just mind-boggling to me,” said Faulkner, 62. “All these feelings of frustration and anger came out in this song. I didn’t set out to write a song about Trump — it just happened, because that’s how I was feeling.”
In the music video for Hung Out to Dry, three of the band members wear latex Donald Trump masks — purchased from an online Halloween costume store — in an empty alleyway, while Faulkner faces the camera and thumbs through a series of handwritten cards displaying the song lyrics, in a homage to Bob Dylan’s classic video for his 1965 single Subterranean Homesick Blues.
Near the end, a fourth band member makes an appearance wearing a Vladimir Putin mask, and the Russian leader happily leads the US president off a cliff in a golf cart in a scene filmed at Bondi Golf & Diggers Club.
“It was done as a bit of a joke, really: you know, a ‘two fingers up’ sort of thing,” said Faulkner of the video. “But it’s quite powerful, and it really slams that song home even more, which I’m happy about, but of course it’ll make some right-wing people quite angry.”
Self-produced and recorded in Harry Vanda’s Hercules Street Studios in Sydney last month, Hung Out to Dry joins earlier single Answered Prayers as prerelease material for a new Hoodoo Gurus collection — set to be the band’s 11th album in a career that began with 1984 debut Stoneage Romeos — which is expected to arrive next year.
As for whether the song will connect with those who actually have the power to remove Trump from office — namely, Americans who have registered to vote — Faulkner is under no illusions, but remains optimistic.
“We want him gone,” he said. “We find him completely offensive. He’s a disgrace. He should be in jail. He will be, once he’s out of the presidency. Hopefully, there’ll be no one there to give him a bloody get-out-of-jail-free card, like he just gave to [longtime adviser] Roger Stone, which is another appalling act.”
“If our song will help some Americans marshal their forces to get rid of him and be a rallying cry — great,” he said. “I don’t think it will be, but we just want to be one more voice, and on the right side of history. This man is going to go down as one of the biggest disgraces in humanity’s history. That’s my artistic statement: using my art to state what I feel, and to make fun of this complete shambles of a human being.”
