Lara Trump Is Still Trying to Make Her Music Career Happen

Tomás Mier
·2-min read

Last week, Lara Trump (RNC co-chair and daughter-in-law of Donald Trump) released a video of herself recording a tribute to firefighters called “Hero.” And while her intentions may have been good, her vocals on the song were not.

The ballad opens with the voice of Madeline Jaymes, an artist with less than 1,500 followers who describes herself as a “sickly Victorian child” in her Instagram bio. Unlike Trump, Jaymes can sing, and she hits some high notes over a soft piano as reenactments of firefighters saving a little girl from a fire (à la Hallmark movie) play onscreen.

Then, a minute and 20 seconds into the song, Trump’s distracting vocals (overtaken by Auto-Tune) come in to ruin the song. “Takes a lot to put you last and everybody first,” Trump sings as she fights for her life to hold a note.

One clip of Trump performing started getting traction on X on Labor Day. “Every note is a violation of the Geneva Convention,” read one reaction. “My dogs were rough-housing until I turned up the volume to hear the voice. They stopped and howled. This is some tone-deaf shit,” wrote another.

“Who is taking her money telling her she can sing?” read a viral repost with the video.

It seems like even Trump wasn’t satisfied with what she recorded because there are no traces of her sharing the video on her social media. Jaymes, on the other hand, shared photos of herself with Trump in the studio earlier this year as she threatened to “share more” of the collaboration “with the world soon.”

“I am excited to see what comes next for Lara in the music world,” Jaymes wrote on Instagram, sharing a clip of the music video. (Jaymes might be the only one.) “She has monumentally impacted my presence as a young artist in this competitive and ever-evolving environment.”

This isn’t the first time Lara Trump’s vocals have stirred a conversation online. Last October, a video went viral of her singing a horrendous cover of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” while appearing on Sky News Australia. At the time, someone altered the video to somehow make her singing worse. The viral clip even got fact-checked by The Associated Press.

Trump’s cover isn’t the only time the Trump family has tried to co-opt “I Won’t Back Down” as a MAGA song — they royally pissed off the Petty estate in 2020 with its use.

More from Rolling Stone

Best of Rolling Stone

Sign up for Rollingstone's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Latest stories