Neil Young debuted a new track ‘Big Crime’ in Chicago this week, a pointed political attack on Donald Trump – check it out below.
The legendary singer-songwriter and Glastonbury 2025 headliner has been a long-standing critic of the current US president, writing earlier this year that “this guy is out of control” and “we need a real president”.
At a show with his band The Chrome Hearts in Chicago’s Huntington Bank Pavilion on Wednesday (August 27), he gave a first airing to a new song named ‘Big Crime’ that directly attacks the Trump administration.
Young posted the song’s lyrics on his Neil Young Archives site, along with complete audio of the soundcheck. “No more great again / There’s big crime in DC at the White House”, he sings. “Don’t need no fascist rules / Don’t want no fascist schools / Don’t want soldiers on our streets / There’s big crime in DC at the White House”.
Watch footage of the performance here, along with the full soundcheck:
The track appears to be inspired by Trump’s declaration of a “crime emergency” in Washington DC earlier this month. He placed the district’s police department under federal control and deployed approximately 800 National Guard troops, as well as FBI and ICE agents, to the area.
Young has a long history of penning protest songs, including recently with the tracks ‘Let’s Roll Again’ and ‘If You’re A Fascist, Get A Tesla’, both direct jabs at Elon Musk and the billionaire class. He also played at a Fighting Oligarchy rally organised by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this year, and publicly defended Bruce Springsteen during his spat with Trump.
He also expressed concern that he would not be allowed to play his current US tour due to his comments about the president, whom he noted had been a fan of his music “for decades”.
Earlier this month, he quit Facebook over its parent company Meta’s reported “unconscionable use of chatbots with children” that “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual”.
Young’s headline set at Glastonbury in June scored him a four-star review, with Patrick Clarke writing for NME: “It is, in short, the definition of no frills. It’s testament to the power of Young’s songwriting, then, just how brilliantly it all works, how little the momentum drops… Here, then, is a headline set that proves that sometimes, there’s still power to be found in an old-school approach.”