President-elect Donald Trump settled a lawsuit this week with singer Eddy Grant, who alleged Trump and his campaign team violated copyright law when they used his hit song “Electric Avenue” in a video mocking President Joe Biden.
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York in 2020, stemmed from a 55-second low-fidelity animated video posted on one of Trump’s social media accounts that same year, as Trump was campaigning against Biden.
The video depicts a red train labeled “Trump Pence KAGA 2020” speeding along railroad tracks, followed by an animated Biden pushing himself along in a handcar, as “Electric Avenue plays.”
According to the lawsuit’s complaint, the video was viewed more than 13.7 million times and garnered thousands of likes on the website known then as Twitter. Grant’s lawyers claimed that Trump and his campaign had financially and politically benefitted from the video, which used Grant’s music without permission.
In a statement following a cease and desist letter, Grant said, “I call upon such arbiter, as is responsible for this sordid abuse, to come forward like a man and let’s sort this thing out, in the way that America demands when such issues are to be sorted, especially when they are wrong,” CNN reported in 2020.
The 1983 hit, which made Grant one of the first Black artists to be played on MTV, is named after Electric Avenue in South London’s Brixton, and it was written after riots against over-policing of Black residents.
The Trump campaign previously denied it had infringed on Grant’s copyright, produced the video, or benefitted from the video financially and politically, according to an answer document filed in 2021.
The legal fight would continue until Trump, his campaign and Grant reached a settlement outside of court, according to an order filed on Wednesday. The terms of their settlement were not publicly disclosed. Grant’s lead attorney, Brian Caplan, declined to give HuffPost more details on the matter.
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“I am only at liberty to state that the matter was resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties,” Caplan said in an email.
A attorney for Trump did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Other musical artists have objected to Trump’s use of their music over the years. Jack White, Celine Dione, Beyoncé and others all demanded the now president-elect stop using their songs during the 2024 campaign.