A high-profile conflict over artistic autonomy and political messaging has erupted after the White House used pop superstar Ariana Grande’s 2024 chart-topping track *Bye* as the soundtrack for a TikTok video promoting the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies, prompting a fierce public rebuke from the artist.
The short-form video, shared to the White House’s official TikTok account on Monday, opens with graphic footage of U.S. border officers placing undocumented individuals in handcuffs, escorting them into vehicles, and transferring them to immigration detention facilities. The caption paired with the clip reads: “Bye-bye… President Trump has delivered the most secure border in history.”
Grande did not hold back in her public response to the unauthorized use of her work, commenting directly on the TikTok post: “Please do not use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense.”
Not long after the Grammy-winning artist and *Wicked* film star issued her criticism, the video had its audio muted, and Grande’s critical comment was removed from the comment section. Multiple TikTok users quickly noticed the changes, pointing out the removal of the artist’s remark and the disabled audio in their own responses to the post.
The White House pushed back against Grande’s condemnation in a statement from spokesperson Abigail Jackson to U.S. media outlets. Jackson argued: “What’s actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens.”
The controversy comes on the heels of President Donald Trump signing a major immigration funding bill into law, which allocates more than $70 billion (£52 billion) to U.S. immigration agencies for the remainder of his current presidential term, which will last two and a half years.
Grande is far from the first high-profile musician to push back against the Trump administration’s unauthorized use of their work for political promotion. Last year, singer Sabrina Carpenter publicly demanded the White House cut ties with her music after a similar clip featuring a segment of her 2024 song *Juno* was released to highlight Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations. Carpenter wrote at the time, “do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.”
During Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign, dozens of legendary and contemporary artists publicly called on the campaign to stop using their music at rallies and official campaign content. ABBA, Céline Dion, and Beyoncé were among the big-name acts that explicitly banned the campaign from using their copyrighted work.
The incident highlights the ongoing tension between political actors seeking to co-opt popular culture to advance their policy messaging and artists who want to control how their creative work is used, particularly when it comes to policies they view as morally objectionable.