Obama’s Spotify playlist reveals an unusually emotional side

Some full-time music critics spend their lives curating playlists they hope become popular. President Barack Obama outdid them all last week in between briefings by senior aides and rounds of golf with friends on vacation in Edgartown in Massachusetts.

For the second year in a row, Obama released his summer vacation music and reading lists. And within a day, Obama's playlist was the most listened-to on Spotify, other than those organised by the global music streaming service itself. That level of popularity occurs only when listeners do more than sample the songs, but actually enjoy the set, said Jonathan Prince, a Spotify spokesman.

“For a playlist to hit No. 1 globally on its own out of nowhere is just bananas,” Prince said. “If he wants a job curating music when this presidential gig is over, we’d take him in a second. That’s very impressive.”

While Prince said that Spotify could not yet measure how Obama’s selections this year had influenced the popularity of particular artists, his picks last year led streams of the band Low Cut Connie to increase 2,906 percent overnight and those of the hip-hop duo Reflection Eternal to jump 798 percent.

The president's musical taste – which includes surf rock, soul, blues and hip-hop – is open-minded, even eclectic. Before playing on Aug 5 at Obama's 55th birthday party, singer Leon Bridges said Obama excitedly told him that he had "gotten ready" that morning by listening to Bridges' tune Smooth Sailin'. "I didn't believe him," Bridges said. But after Smooth Sailin' was listed second on Obama's playlist, Bridges changed his mind.

Brian Wilson, a founder of the Beach Boys, said he too was honored to have his song Good Vibrations among the president's favorites. Both musical and literary critics described Obama's selections as "emotional", a description rarely applied to the man himself. A beach theme also ran through them. In addition to the Beach Boys on his playlist, Obama's reading list included Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, a memoir by William Finnegan, an avid surfer.

(– NYT service)