Margo Price performed her defiant anthem “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” on Tuesday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! — and it just may turn out to be the late-night show’s last musical performance.
On Wednesday, ABC pulled Kimmel’s show from the air over comments the host made surrounding the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk during Tuesday night’s monologue. Kimmel said, in part, that some right-wingers were trying to “score political points” in the aftermath of the shooting, and also played a clip of President Trump responding to a question about Kirk’s death by crowing about a new ballroom he’s constructing at the White House.
Apparently, this was too much for Nexstar, “America’s largest local television broadcasting group,” and ABC and its parent company, Disney, bowed to Nexstar’s pressure. “Jimmy Kimmel Live will be pre-empted indefinitely,” an ABC spokesperson told Rolling Stone. The spokesperson did not clarify the reason behind the decision. (Earlier on Wednesday, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, publicly called on licensed broadcasters to stop airing Kimmel’s show.)
If Kimmel doesn’t return — Trump, in a TruthSocial post, said the show was “cancelled” — that would make Price’s performance an ironic capstone to the series’ 22-year run. “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down,” off the Nashville country singer’s latest album, Hard Headed Woman, was inspired by both The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood and a quote that Kris Kristofferson said to comfort Sinead O’Connor in 1992 after the Irish singer was booed after tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live. Price began her Kimmel performance by tearing up a sheet of paper that read simply “Bastards.”
“I wrote this song three years ago, and it was started about my anger at the music industry and the people I was working with,” Price told Rolling Stone during an appearance on the Nashville Now podcast this summer. “It’s funny how that businessman can very easily be anyone who is in a seat of power and corrupting the world.”
In an Instagram post on Thursday, Price shared a video of her Kimmel performance and wrote, “If this was the last word, I’m glad it was mine.”
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