Throughout this summer and autumn, The Simpsons and Spinal Tap star Harry Shearer has been releasing a song a week via YouTube, in which he performs as Donald Trump, exploring the dark and often comical recesses of the president’s mind during his time in office. Today, it is revealed that this autumn, the complete collection of these tracks will be released as a full album. The Many Moods of Donald Trump, comprised of 13 numbers, will be available Oct. 30 on CD/LP and on all streaming platforms, just three days before the U.S. goes to the polls.
The Many Moods Of Donald Trump is available for pre-order HERE.
“America has never had a President so demanding of our continued attention. I decided to give him too much of mine.” Harry Shearer
The album announcement coincides with the release of the latest addition to the song cycle. “Executive Time,” and its accompanying motion capture video, is a languorous love of leisure ballad, in which Shearer as Trump sings wistfully of those long periods of contemplation and nothingness between unnecessary briefings from so called ‘experts.’ In “Executive Time,” Shearer poses (and goes some way to answer) the question:
“When does the President get the time to watch all the TV news? It’s a big section of his daily schedule.”
The accompanying video for “Executive Time” was made Covid-style with Harry in isolation in Los Angeles, filmed by Matt Mindlin remotely with a production team in Sydney, Australia headed by Matt Hermans (Electric Lens Co) and Michela Ledwidge (MOD studio). The groundbreaking motion-capture animation portrays the U.S. President in ‘do not disturb’ mode as he watches his flat screen, fine tunes his golf swing, practices his signature, stares moodily through his window and does all the other things befitting the most powerful man in the world as he goes about his daily business.
It follows the motion-capture video for “Son-In-Law,” which launched the song series, showing Trump both behind his desk in the Oval Office and as he addresses the gathered press corps on the White House lawn, whilst lionizing his senior advisor and husband of his daughter Ivanka. The entertainment journalist Louis Chilton, writing in The Independent UK, described Shearer’s performance in the “Son-In-Law” video that he described the singing Trump as “…possibly the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen”
MORE ABOUT HARRY SHEARER
Harry Shearer has vocally portrayed every U.S. president of his lifetime. Donald Trump is the third he has portrayed physically, having previously played Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan on screen.
Shearer has been using his syndicated public radio program (and now a podcast) Le Show to do political satire since 1983, which led to creation of several albums, the most recent being 2012’s Can’t Take A Hint and 2010’s Greed And Fear. Shearer’s overall career in Hollywood dates back to his childhood when he was cast as the original Eddie Haskell in Leave It To Beaver. After earning a degree in political science at UCLA, Shearer briefly worked as a journalist before joining the political satire group The Credibility Gap, which also featured his future Spinal Tap collaborator Michael McKean. He continued to work on cutting edge comedic projects throughout the 1970s, eventually becoming a Saturday Night Live cast member for two separate stints.
The Many Moods Of Donald Trump will be released through Twanky Records, the label Shearer founded with his wife, singer/songwriter Judith Owen.
