Ariana Grande Tells the White House to Stop Using Her Music — and the Song Got Pulled
Ariana Grande Tells the White House to Stop Using Her Music — and the Song Got Pulled
The pop star went public after the Trump administration used her 2024 hit "Bye" as the soundtrack to a TikTok video showing ICE agents making arrests. She's far from the first artist to push back.
Pop superstar Ariana Grande went directly after the Trump administration this week — not on a stage, but in a TikTok comment section. And she didn't just say it once. She said it over and over until the administration had no choice but to pull her song.
The conflict started on June 9, when the official White House TikTok account posted a 14-second video showing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers handcuffing people, loading them into vehicles, and transporting them to detention centers. Playing over the footage was Grande's Grammy-winning 2024 track Bye. The caption leaned into the song choice: "Bye-bye 👋 President Trump has delivered the most secure border in history."
Grande Floods the Comments — and Wins
By Thursday, June 12, Grande had seen enough. She posted a pointed comment on the White House's TikTok directly: "Please do not ever use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense." She also added "F*** ICE" to her message, according to Reuters.
But Grande didn't stop there. When her comment was quietly hidden by the White House account, she screenshotted it and reposted it repeatedly in the reply section — making her objection impossible to bury. Fans quickly noticed: one widely shared response summarized the standoff as, "They deleted her comment but she deleted the whole song."
A spokesperson for Grande confirmed to Variety that she had made the comment, but noted it was not publicly visible on the post. Her team was "actively working" to have the audio removed from the clip. The audio was subsequently stripped from the video.
White House Fires Back — with Grande's Own Song Titles
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson didn't apologize. Instead, she doubled down on the administration's immigration stance: "We'll say this one last time: what's actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens," Jackson said in a statement.
This isn't the first time the White House has responded to Grande specifically. Back in September 2025, after Grande reshared a post on Instagram challenging Trump voters with the question "Has your life gotten better?", White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai issued a statement littered with Grande's song titles — including Save Your Tears, Just Like Magic, and, notably, Get Well Soon, a song Grande wrote about the trauma of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing. It is unclear whether Desai was aware of the song's deeply personal meaning when he chose to include it.
Grande's Long History of Speaking Out
This controversy didn't come out of nowhere. Grande has been consistently vocal about immigration and civil rights issues. Earlier this year, she appeared at the 83rd Annual Golden Globe Awards wearing an "ICE OUT" pin — a moment that drew significant attention on social media. She had previously supported Democratic nominee Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election and performed for former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at a 2014 White House event.
Grande has also previously used her platform to amplify concerns about ICE raids, transphobic legislation, and threats to free speech — positions that have kept her firmly at odds with the current administration's policies.
She's Not Alone: A Pattern of Artists Pushing Back
Grande is the latest in a growing list of artists who have publicly objected to the White House using their music without permission to promote immigration enforcement on social media. Here's a look at the timeline:
What Does the Law Actually Say?
You might be wondering: can't Grande and these other artists just sue the White House? The legal reality is more complicated than it might seem. Because of how music licenses work on platforms like TikTok, the platform itself typically holds blanket licenses with record labels, which can allow anyone — including government accounts — to use certain songs in their videos. That leaves individual artists with limited legal leverage to force immediate content removal, even when they strongly object.
What artists can do — and what Grande's team did effectively — is work directly with their label and music distributors to have specific audio removed from specific posts. That process succeeded here, with the audio stripped from the White House video within hours of Grande going public.
The broader issue of political figures using artists' music without consent has a long history in American politics. Artists ranging from Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young to the estates of Tom Petty and Leonard Cohen have all issued cease-and-desist requests to political campaigns over unauthorized use of their music, often to limited immediate effect.
What Happens Next?
For now, the audio is gone from the White House TikTok. Grande, who is currently touring on her long-anticipated Eternal Sunshine Tour — her first in seven years — has not issued any further public statements beyond her original comment. She is also set to star in Wicked: For Good, releasing November 21, and the upcoming Meet the Parents 4.
The broader debate, however, is unlikely to go away. As long as the administration continues posting social media content set to popular music, artists are going to keep speaking out — and fans are going to keep paying close attention to whose songs end up in those videos.
