"Unleash The Love" ...while openly supporting a man whose flammable rhetoric have now manifested itself in attempted assassinations of his critics and opponents.
I suppose the album title always was more of a casual pun on words as opposed to any actual values of love held or professed by Mr Love.
One may be forgiven for placing deeper meaning than that which was intended.
Good luck, my American friends.
Truth. History will be no more on Mike's side than Trump's.
The fact that Mike has gone out of his way to be overtly political, posing with Trump, and hanging out whenever possible repeatedly "buddying-up" with Trump unfortunately makes this an "on topic" subject when discussing the band. The optics have been burned into the public's minds over and over again. Let's not forget that Mike Love trended on Twitter just recently, which is quite a feat for a guy who has been anything but Mr. Popularity within his own industry. He trended because he tied in himself (and unfortunately the brand) with Trump. Anything for free publicity I guess.
(Side note: while I despise Trump, I cannot find fault with Trump's particular action of signing that music bill into law, although it still seems shocking that he'd do an action for any reason other than self-serving purposes).
But Mike continually going out of his way in a seemingly star-struck manner to visually remind the public of his (Mike's) support of Trump will have an impact on this band; many people will continue to lump in the whole band (Mike, after all, "is" The Beach Boys, right?) with support of Trump's policies, anti-LGBT agenda, etc. Mike can't just say that he "doesn't support all of Trump's policies" and expect this to be a get-out-of-jail-free card, "allowing" him to repeatedly support and align himself with someone who promotes hate.
Mike should be asked by reporters in all his future interviews "what do you say to LGBT Beach Boys fans who question your repeated support and posing with a president who is stripping them of all sorts of rights?" This should be something Mike should consider, but he's seemingly too far in a bubble in the Naked Room on his tour to even think about this stuff. It doesn't friggin' matter to him. The LGBT community must not be lining Mike's pockets enough for him to care. That's a fact. If he thought it'd truly hurt his bottom line, he would not be posing with Trump repeatedly.
There will be a sizeable amount of people who will never want anything to do with Mike Love or the band due to this. Maybe not enough to hurt his tour numbers of fans wanting to see a band named The Beach Boys regardless of who's in it... but it just cements many people who miiiiiiiight have been willing to turn the corner and appreciate Mike's genuine talent for his work on, say, Wild Honey as revealed on Sunshine Tomorrow, but will now just dismiss him entirely for all times. It's just ironic to the max for a guy who doubly ironically is named Love and triply ironically is unleashing the bird of peace on his album cover.
I wish this was off topic, but it sadly isn't.
That is some chutzpah of Mike having a US flag with a peace symbol on his album cover. Peace and Love goes reeeal nice with Anti-LGBT rights. Mike's album cover is like the prequel to Mel Brooks' High Anxiety.
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