More importantly, even before Lloyd Webber bought the Trump Tower apartment to begin with in 1989, Trump was a fan of his shows. (His wife, Madeleine Lloyd Webber, now owns a smaller apartment in another Trump building in New York.) Andrew Lloyd Webber famously sold his Trump Tower apartment in 2010 - ending a 17-year saga in which Lloyd Webber tried to sell his apartment four times, at prices ranging from $7.95 million to $22.5 million, before finally finding a buyer at $16.5 million. Some pundits have speculated that the reason Andrew Lloyd Webber features so prominently at Trump rallies is that he, like fellow Trump-playlist favorite Elton John, owns an apartment at Trump Tower.īut those pundits are making a mistake that pundits often make with Trump: They focus too much on his identity as a 'businessman' and forget just how much of his business success relies on his outsize personality.įor one thing, the theory isn't even correct. Trump's been a Lloyd Webber fan for decades. Perhaps that’s real authenticity? Easily the most surprising bit of my week. How does the world not know that Trump, who seems eager to end the GOP primary with a testosterone-measuring contest, chooses to score his raucous mega-rallies with Andrew Lloyd Webber? All of his events begin and end with 'The Music of the Night' from the 'Phantom of the Opera' and 'Memory' from 'Cats' (a song about a former 'Glamour cat'), along with some Adele tunes.

When MSNBC had its beat reporters for the Democratic and Republican primaries swap beats for a week, Trump's Webbermania was the thing that reporter Alex Seitz-Wald thought America most needed to know about the race: Just not sure what to make of the number of Phantom of the Opera jams on this Trump event playlist The Trump rally playlist includes 'Music of the Night' from Phantom of the Opera AND 'Memory' from Cats, and I desperately want to know why. Specifically, many of them wonder: Why does Trump play so many songs from British Broadway musical composer Andrew Lloyd Webber?! But here's still one thing that befuddles them: Trump's pre-rally playlist. Reporters have gotten used to this by now. Using tactics that owe a little to church revivals and a lot to insult comedy, Trump skillfully directs his audience's excitement (toward himself) and their resentment (often toward the members of the media in attendance). The heart of Donald Trump's strategy to win the Republican presidential nomination is his massive, electric, occasionally violent campaign rallies.

Phantom of the opera song