Donald Trump detractor and country-rock singer Brandi Carlile is one of three performers the NFL has named for its Super Bowl’s pre-game show on Feb. 8.
On Monday, Carlile announced on Instagram Stories that she would be singing “America the Beautiful” before the game. Other performers joining her before the game kicks off include Coco Jones and Charlie Puth—but Carlile will be the most vocal anti-MAGA celebrity to take the stage.
The news comes on the heels of backlash to the organization’s selection of Puerto Rican reggaetón star Bad Bunny for the big game’s halftime show. MAGA proponents have raged over the pick because of the singer’s ethnicity and Spanish-language music, with the least informed critics insinuating the American-born star is in the country illegally.
Bad Bunny also riled the right when he declared he wouldn’t perform his global tour in the U.S. to protect his fans from Trump’s ICE raids. The NFL has not wavered in its decision, and choosing Carlile to sing before the game could be seen as another act of resistance.
The LGBTQ icon has not wavered from her scathing criticisms of Trump and his rise to power since he was first elected in 2016. In October of this year, Carlile summed up her thoughts on the state of America with the song “Church & State”—an indictment of Christian nationalism. She sings on the track, “And they don’t see what we see, but we believe, we believe that they’re not gonna live forever / Burn tomorrow, never say / They’re here today, then they’re gone forever.”
Carlile also sings the lyrics, “And when the frailty overcomes them / And they begin to crawl / Reaching out their bloody hands / Guess who gets to make the call?” before quoting Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists in the song declaring a separation between church and state. She quotes: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
When Trump first won the presidency in 2016, Carlile told an interviewer she was “really upset with Trump voters right now,” and though she didn’t understand “why,” she was “listening.”
What she heard seemed to do little to sway her opinion on Trump, however. In 2019, she was one of several celebrities to drop out of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., in protest of the inclusion of Trump’s then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Carlile opposed Trump’s family separation policies in a statement, saying “merit-based abusers of displaced people” had no place among “the most powerful and inspiring women in America.”
She also shouted down “the oppressors” on social media after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. “The politics and policies don’t match the people,” she wrote on Facebook. This past spring, after the Trump administration slashed the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Carlile joined Elton John’s campaign launch to offset the cuts to HIV/AIDS funding.
As for fellow pre-game musicians Coco Jones and Charlie Puth, neither has spoken out in support or opposition of the president. Jones, a rising R&B star, will sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
Puth, who will sing the national anthem, briefly became the subject of scrutiny over his political views in 2020, when internet sleuths found a Facebook profile linked to the singer that had celebrated pro-Trump content. Years later, he was apparently “liking” pro-Joe Biden posts on Instagram. Puth never clarified his stance one way or the other.
In 2015, Puth declared, “It’s probably better to never, ever talk about political things because people hate you. They’ll beat me up if I say something wrong.”
