Barack Obama's 2020 summer playlist includes Leon Bridges, Billie Eilish, and Megan Thee Stallion
Barack Obama’s regular lists of movies and TV shows and music he was into were cool when he was the president, especially since the contents were often just unexpected enough for them to seem legitimate, but did anyone really expect him to keep doing it for so long after he left office? Is he going to commit to doing this forever? Because keeping up with cool new cultural things is exhausting. At some point he has to get sick of this.
But we are obviously not at that point yet, because—as a tie-in with the opening of Democratic National Convention—Obama has just shared his 2020 summer playlist and, as usual, it’s unfairly cool. A quarter or so of the list is specifically dedicated to DNC performers like Leon Bridges, Common, The Chicks, Billy Porter, and Billie Eilish, so those picks doesn’t necessarily count (of course he’s going to endorse people who are performing for his buddy Joe Biden), but the vast majority of the list seems like a fair assessment of Obama’s 2020 tastes. There are some retro picks, like Otis Redding, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, John Coltrane, and Outkast (if they don’t want to be “retro” they could put out some new music), as well as more contemporary performers like J Balvin, HAIM, Frank Ocean, Childish Gambino, Rihanna, and Megan Thee Stallion (no “WAP,” but maybe he’ll get to that and Folklore for his 2020 fall playlist).
Hopefully Biden will start doing his own lists if he gets elected, because it would be a lot of fun to hear what kind of cool music he listens to in 2020. Does Whitesnake still put out new albums? Remember when that was the sort of joke people would make about Joe Biden? Break the boot off of your Trans Am, ‘cause we’re bringing them the fuck back! (Nah, not really. That kind of playful depiction of Biden as a fun-loving party dude is… less appealing these days.)