An oral history of how the QAnon theme played at a Trump rally

As usual, this was a big mix-up! Just a case of someone playing a totally innocuous royalty-free song from a popular audio library platform, as the spokesman said! Here, I think, is an oral history of exactly how this mistake occurred.

Kevin Greg, venue music coordinator: I was in charge of picking the song that played while Donald Trump gave his long rant. Bob helped.

Bob Robert, helped: It was just one of those classic accidents where you play an innocuous royalty-free song from a popular audio library platform.

Kevin: I was excited to be the music guy at this Donald Trump rally because my passion is playing “Tiny Dancer,” but my other passion is never under any circumstances obtaining the rights to play “Tiny Dancer,” and this job allowed me to combine the two.

Bob: Likewise, I got into it because I love to play Adele but also love to receive cease-and-desist letters from Adele.

Dana Milbank: Hey QAnon! Republicans are playing your song.

Kevin: My second reason for getting into the Trump rally music biz was that I personally can never listen to “Nessun Dorma” too many times. Play it for me right now and I’ll tell you, play it again. N+1 times, that’s the number of times I want to listen to “Nessun Dorma.”

Bob: So for this, they said you have to play something that will get all the rally listeners into the right mood.

Kevin: And we said, “What mood is the right mood, though?” And they said, “You know, kind of, if Donald Trump suggests that they should grab a pitchfork and go to a second location, a good soundtrack for that.”

Bob: And no lyrics because then he has to talk over them, and it can get mixed up. He’s sitting there saying, “The press is the enemy of the people,” and in the background James Taylor is singing “You’ve got a friend,” or Kelis is making statements about milkshakes; it muddies it.

Kevin: So then they said, “There are a lot of songs on SoundCloud. Just be sure that of the millions of free songs, you don’t choose one that might cause the people in attendance to do something weird,” but I said, “Relax, this is a Trump rally, when was the last time people who heard Donald Trump speak went off and did something weird?”

Bob: Anyway, at this point, we were panicking because he had already started and was getting closer and closer to the where he rants about how he won the election really and the FBI is bad now.

Kevin: And I was trying to think, what song would be perfect? And then I thought: “Nessun Dorma”! But just as I was reaching for the phone to play it, a mouse ran up my leg, knocking me slightly to the left, and I hit a row of dominoes Bob had lined up on the desk …

Bob: Gotta have my dominoes.

Kevin: … which in turn hit a small decorative set of clacking, swinging pendulum balls I have on the desk, which knocked the phone over into a tub of water …

Bob: Gotta have my tub of water.

Kevin: … and when it hit the water, the phone somehow went back up to the M’s and selected this song “Mirrors,” which sounds a ton like the QAnon song. But we didn’t change it, because it went really well with the speech! But then people got weird.

Bob: Which I feel like is on the speech! I think if the speech sounds like it should have the QAnon theme song playing behind it, you have got a larger problem. If you are delivering a nice, normal speech and somebody starts playing QAnon-adjacent music in the background, people will say, “Yikes! Turn that thing off!”

Kevin: You play that for your average crowd, you know, they’re not going to start nudging each other and waving their fingers in the air and going, “Oh, it’s the QAnon song! Finally, mainstream recognition for the conspiracy theory we know and love!”

Bob: You’re saying it’s on the crowd.

Kevin: You’re saying it’s on the speech.

Bob: Maybe a little bit on the SoundCloud app and the mouse, dominoes, balls and tub of water. But mostly the speech.

Kevin: And the crowd.

Bob: Just not the music. You know, you’d think based on the speech and the crowd and everything else that the music might have been intentionally QAnon-y, too. But nope. Pure accident.

Kevin: Pure accident.

Bob: Come on, let’s go get you some “Nessun Dorma.”