If you’ve been watching Trump rallies, you know The Donald grooms his soundtrack as carefully as he styles his hair. He makes lavish use of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical numbers; he’ll often open and close his events to the strains of Twisted Sister’s 1984 hit, “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” He uses pop music in subtler ways as well. When Trump was pushing the issue of Ted Cruz’s Canadian birthplace, he tauntingly played Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” When warning of the dangers of Syrian refugees, he read aloud the lyrics of Al Wilson’s 1968 song “The Snake,” about a woman who nurses an injured snake, only to be bitten as a reward.

Some of this is wit; some is pure theater. And some is evidence of plain old deal making. The Twisted Sister, for instance: It might seem strange for a real-estate mogul in beautiful suits to rally the crowd with a party anthem sung by a campy hair-metal band from the ’80s. But the real surprise is that he actually got permission: Dee Snider, the front man of Twisted Sister, liked Trump’s confrontational spirit and gave him the OK.

And, perhaps more importantly, as the Adele incident this week shows, when he doesn’t get the OK, he doesn’t seem to care. This is all radical departure from the traditional GOP playbook.