ABC NewsRachel Platten and a songwriter for One Direction spoke out on Twitter after their songs were performed at Donald Trump’s inaugural ball on Friday.
One of the performers, The Piano Guys, performed a mash-up of “Amazing Grace” and Rachel’s “Fight Song,” despite the fact that “Fight Song” was used at many Hillary Clinton campaign rallies last year, and was also played at the Democratic National Convention.
A clearly upset Rachel tweeted, “While I respect the office of the President and the peaceful transfer of power, I want to make clear that at no point did the Piano Guys ask for permission, nor did I or anyone on my team know of, approve or endorse their decision to play Fight Song tonight.”
The Piano Guys also performed One Direction’s hit “What Makes You Beautiful” at the ball, leading the man who wrote it, Savan Kotecha, to take to Twitter to denounce the performance.
“They were absolutely NOT given permission to use WMYB at the inaugural ball. I will be looking into taking action,” Kotecha tweeted. “There’s nothing I can do re WMYB now, but the song was written out of love for my wife. It’s just heartbreaking that it was used to celebrated [sic] a man who stands for divisiveness.”
In their defense, the Piano Guys later tweeted, “Our performance tonight, which combined “Fight Song” and “Amazing Grace” had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton or politics…We chose to perform our version of “Fight Song/Amazing Grace” – it was not endorsed by Rachel Platten. We love Rachel and we love her song.”
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