Terri Nunn really regrets for her show on New Year’s Eve. She had no idea that it would bother people – or be seen as a politician.
That’s what 80s hitmakers lead singer Berlin said after performing at President Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Nunn said that “I wouldn’t have done it if I had known what I learned while there,” referring to what she called a shocking “disregard for the pandemic”.
“My goal in performing was not to support a political party,” the “Take My Breath Away” singer said on Monday in a statement posted on the band’s Facebook page. “I see now that this is not how it looked and I also apologize for that.”
On social media on New Year’s Day, people were repudiating their fandom for the band and the singer, with many misunderstandings that it had been a Nunn concert, not a performance in Berlin. The LA-based band split up in 1987 (and met last year), but Nunn retained the rights to play under the name.
Berlin co-founder and keyboardist David Diamond tweeted Friday, “I want to make it clear that I was not at this show, nor did I plan to attend. I spent the night at my home in #Truckee. Happy New Year to everybody!”
Trump also did not attend the event, having shortened his Florida vacation and returned to Washington, DC, at the beginning of New Year’s Eve. However, among the 500 guests at the annual party were Rudy Giuliani, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Lara and Eric Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Nunn said on Facebook that the event was presented to her in the contract as a small, safe New Year’s Eve event for COVID for club members. Other artists on the project were Vanilla Ice, Taylor Dayne and the incarnation led by Mike Love of the Beach Boys.
“Unfortunately, it was not safe for Covid anywhere in Florida. I had no idea that masks and social distance were not necessary. I thought I was up to date on all Covid news everywhere, but it clearly wasn’t, ”said Nunn in the statement. “I was shocked by the lack of consideration by Florida and Mar-a-Lago for the pandemic and, if I had known, I would never have gone.”
Nunn also specifically apologized to LGBTQ fans “who thought my performance was a statement against them”, promising that she has always supported it.
The singer said she left the New Year’s Eve event as soon as she fulfilled her contractual obligation and the COVID-19 test was negative on Sunday.
Berlin was formed in LA in the late 1970s and gained fame in the 1980s with songs like “No More Words” and “The Metro”. After the band split in 1987 and some legal battles, Nunn eventually performed with his own lineup in Berlin, starting a decade later. Nunn, Diamond and their co-founder from Berlin, John Crawford, ended up playing together in 2018, then reunited in 2019 to record and release the album “Transcendance”.
Trump bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985 and transformed it from a property into a private club in 1995. The president maintained a private residence there and refers to Mar-a-Lago now as his “Winter White House”. It has been a center of presidential activity since it opened in 2017 and is expected to serve as the post-presidential home of the Trumps, although Palm Beach neighbors say they can’t do it legally because of the deal that made it a private club. .