Jonny Greenwood, co-founder of Radiohead and composer of the 2017 film score for Phantom Thread, wants his music stripped from the Melania documentary, and he's dragged director Paul Thomas Anderson into the fight.

The pair issued a demand on Monday that the song "Barbara Rose," originally composed for the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed Phantom Thread, be removed from the film about the first lady.

A representative for Greenwood laid out the complaint to Variety:

"It has come to our attention that a piece of music from 'Phantom Thread' has been used in the 'Melania' documentary. While Jonny Greenwood does not own the copyright in the score, Universal failed to consult Jonny on this third-party use which is a breach of his composer agreement. As a result, Jonny and Paul Thomas Anderson have asked for it to be removed from the documentary."

There's a telling admission buried in that statement: Greenwood doesn't own the copyright. Universal does. Universal licensed the music. The legal ground here is a claimed breach of a composer agreement — not ownership, not theft, not unauthorized use in the traditional sense. This is a contractual dispute dressed up as a principled stand.

The real score

Nobody forced Greenwood to sign a deal that transferred his copyright to Universal. He did that voluntarily, as composers routinely do in the film industry. Universal, as the rights holder, licensed the track. Whether that license required Greenwood's personal consultation is a matter between him and Universal, not a matter between him and the Melania documentary's producers.

But framing it as a licensing technicality wouldn't generate the headlines, would it? Framing it as an artist heroically refusing to let his work appear in a documentary about the first lady of the United States — now that gets you a news cycle.

The entertainment world has made a cottage industry out of these gestures. Musicians demanding their songs be pulled from political events, artists issuing cease-and-desists over campaign rallies, and composers suddenly discovering contractual fine print the moment their work brushes up against someone the cultural establishment disapproves of. The pattern is familiar enough to set your watch by.

Meanwhile, audiences don't care

According to The NY Post, the Melania documentary earned the best opening for a documentary in over a decade. Verified audience users on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 99% approval rating. That's not a typo — ninety-nine percent.

Entertainment critics, of course, widely panned the film. The disconnect between critics and audiences has become one of the most reliable indicators in American culture. When the professional class loathes something and real viewers embrace it almost unanimously, it tells you more about the professional class than about the film.

Amazon MGM's head of domestic theatrical distribution, Kevin Wilson, offered this assessment to Fox News Digital:

"We're very encouraged by the strong start and positive audience response, with early box office for 'Melania' exceeding our expectations."

Wilson also pointed to the project's long-term trajectory, referencing a forthcoming docu-series that would extend the content's reach well beyond its theatrical run and onto Prime Video.

The money question

Amazon MGM Studios reportedly spent $40 million on the documentary, with an additional $35 million poured into marketing. The film earned less than $10 million in its opening weekend. Those numbers have given critics ammunition — but they also ignore the broader business model. Theatrical runs for documentaries have never been the whole picture, and Amazon has an entire streaming platform built to extract long-tail value from exactly this kind of culturally significant content.

Whether the investment pays off depends on metrics that won't be visible for months. Judging a streaming-era documentary by its opening weekend box office is like judging a book by its first week in bookstores while ignoring its Kindle sales for the next five years.

Art and selective conscience

The deeper question is one the entertainment industry never wants to answer honestly: Would Jonny Greenwood have issued this demand if his music had been licensed for a documentary about a figure the cultural left celebrates?

Composers license their work through studios. Those studios sub-license it constantly — for commercials, trailers, other films, corporate events. The machinery of Hollywood runs on exactly this kind of third-party usage. The sudden discovery of contractual violations tends to correlate suspiciously with political discomfort, not genuine artistic concern.

Greenwood is free to pursue his contractual rights. If Universal breached his composer agreement, that's a real legal matter — between him and Universal. But the public spectacle of demanding removal from a documentary about the first lady carries a different kind of energy.

The documentary follows 20 days in the first lady's life before President Donald Trump's second term in office. It's a portrait of a woman who has navigated extraordinary public scrutiny with remarkable composure. That audiences responded to it overwhelmingly — while the critical establishment recoiled — says something about the gap between the people who consume culture and the people who gatekeep it.

One song won't change that equation. Whether "Barbara Rose" stays or goes, the Melania documentary already landed — and no amount of contractual posturing will unring that bell.