Singer and X Factor runner-up Rebecca Ferguson announced Monday that she would accept an invitation to sing at Donald Trump's inauguration if she got to perform "Strange Fruit," the BBC reports. That might not go over so well with Trump's team, though — "Strange Fruit" was originally recorded as a protest song by Billie Holiday, and takes its words from an Abel Meeropol poem that powerfully refers to the lynching of African Americans as "black bodies swinging in the southern breeze."
Ferguson praised the song's "huge historical importance," noting that it was "blacklisted in the United States for being too controversial."
"['Strange Fruit'] speaks to all the disregarded and down-trodden black people in the United States. A song that is a reminder of how love is the only thing that will conquer all the hatred in this world," Ferguson wrote in her open letter.
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Trump's team might have to make some tough decisions, then. The inauguration organizers have reportedly been having trouble locking down musical performers for the big day. So far, Andrea Bocelli, Elton John, Garth Brooks, and Céline Dion are all rumored to have turned down the honor.
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