A month ago, Melania arrived to the 2026 movies schedule to point the spotlight on First Lady Melania Trump in a cinematic setting. The Brett Ratner-directed documentary from Amazon MGM Studios hasn’t lacked in controversy, and that includes how its soundtrack came together. The latest update on that front is that a bunch of musical artists turned down their music being featured in Melania, which one of the producers described as a “disappointment.”
Marc Beckman, who is also one of Melania Trump’s advisors, spoke with Variety about his work on the movie. Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” is one of the songs prominently featured in Melania, with it apparently being one of President Donald Trump’s wife’s favorite tunes. When the publication asked Beckman if that was the song that was most challenging to license for the documentary, he answered:
I’ll tell you on the record, if you want to know. There was music that we tried to get, but sadly, there were politics to it. For example, the guys from Guns N’ Roses split down the middle politically. There was a beautiful song we wanted to use, and one of the guys — I don’t want to name, it’s not fair —said, ‘You got it. Go.’ And the other one was basically like, ‘There’s just no way.’ We needed everybody’s approval to get it in the film. So Guns N’ Roses was definitely a disappointment for us; we all have a lot of respect for Guns N’ Roses.
So in the cases of bands, if all of the members don’t sign off on the song in question being used in a movie or TV show, then it’s game over. So Melania Trump, Marc Beckman and the rest of the Melania team had to make peace with not using the unidentified “Guns N’ Roses” song, and the same went for a different song from solo artist Grace Jones. As Beckman explained:
And then there was a song that we wanted to use from Grace Jones; obviously, also a tremendous amount of respect for her. She apparently couldn’t get over the political hurdle, notwithstanding the fact that the film is not a political film. So that was disappointing, too. It’s disappointing when people put politics so far ahead, and that happened a little bit with the film, for sure.
Other songs prominently featured in Melania include The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” and James Brown and Betty Jean Newsome’s “It's a Man's Man's Man's World.” But, to borrow another song title from The Rolling Stones, you can’t always get what you want, and it just didn’t work out with The Rolling Stones and Grace Jones. Marc Beckman also mentioned during the interview that Melania came close to using one of Prince’s songs, but the late musician’s estate allegedly put the kibosh on that because, according to the lawyer who spoke with the documentary’s team, “Prince would never want his song associated with Donald Trump.”
With Melania’s theatrical run having already wound down, it remains to be seen when it will become available to stream with a Prime Video subscription. Though the movie got off to a strong start at the box office, it has only made $16.5 million worldwide off a $40 million production budget. Though Melania has been poorly received by critics, Rotten Tomatoes did confirm that Melania’s nearly-perfect Popcornmeter, a.k.a. the audience score, is accurate rather than “bot manipulation.”
