Tiffany Trump, who will be speaking Tuesday evening at the Republican National Convention, has always seemed like the more publicity-shy Trump daughter. Compared with her older half-sister Ivanka, who has served as her father’s terrifyingly effective defender and adviser, the 22-year-old child of Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples, has participated in occasional family TV appearances, such as April’s CNN town hall, but she has largely retained her privacy. Tonight’s speech, then, will serve as something like her introduction to the American people.
In the meantime, there’s one little-remembered episode that could lend some insight into Tiffany’s personality and aspirations. At the very least, it can shed some light on the innovative ways indulgent wealthy families can blow through cash. In 2011, Tiffany released a synthy pop single, “Like a Bird (feat. Sprite & Logic).” “I love music, it’s always been very dear to me, a big passion,” Tiffany said in an Oprah segment taped around the time of the single’s release. “It’s more of a hobby right now, but we’ll see in a couple years if I actually do want to take it to the next level.” The song never went anywhere, alas, and Tiffany seems to have shelved her pop-star dreams. But luckily for Trump-family-disaster completists, “Like a Bird” is still available on Amazon and iTunes.
Birds make all kinds of horrible noises, so it would be unfair to call “Like a Bird” inherently un-birdlike. The lyrics are often impossible to decipher through the veil of AutoTune and blaring instrumentation, but it’s clear that its most important themes include partying and feeling the beat:
Everybody’s partying, obsessing over crazy things.
I just want serenity while living it up.
Every time you lie to me, it’s something that I’ve fallen for.
You know what to say, baby baby, don’t you go. …
If you feel the beat, then you’re living it up.
Feel like I started falling, crawling through the liquid love.
You’re cute and you tweeted me, baby you go “Beep beep beep.”
With references to “designer jeans” and Madonna, the overall effect is an idea jotted down on a napkin in 1987 and hastily updated by adding a reference to Twitter. Meanwhile, it’s hard to even tell how many performers it features. Are Sprite & Logic two people or one? At one point, either Sprite or Logic or “Sprite & Logic” raps about how he’s going to “shine like aluminum foil in the club.” As one Amazon review put it, “Sad.”
In its final stanzas, however, the 5-year-old track starts to sound eerily prescient—a song for our times. It’s hard to imagine a better theme for the 2016 Republican National Convention than this:
(Like a bird like a bird like a bird like a bird)
Need to escape this place.
(Like a bird like a bird like a bird like a bird)
Wanna fly away, take me away.
