Recently, Politico asked the 2024 U.S. Presidential candidates to create playlists featuring their 20 favorite songs. Politico used the same rules posted by the originator of the idea, Nick Worrall:
"Make a 20-track comp of your all-time fav tracks, each artist can only feature once. . . Not the 'best' songs, the ones that bring instant joy the second you hear the first note, the ones that give other people the best insight into what stirs your soul. Share when ready. #20tracks"
Politico further explains:
Not all of them responded, of course, and a few responded with fewer than 20, making us wonder if they're really in it for the long haul. But there's plenty to love, disagree with and wonder about in the lists of those who did. If you think someone's picks can really tell us something about their soul, it's worth wondering what made Chris Christie choose "Thunder Road" out of all of his beloved Bruce Springsteen's songs — a track about getting older and "one last chance to make it real."
We even made their playlists available on Spotify, so you can download the one you like best. (Not all candidates stuck to the rule about not repeating artists, but we forgave the oversight.) We'll be keeping an eye on whose playlist gets the most downloads, so you can vote on the candidates' music tastes, even if you don't plan on voting for the candidate.
I perused the lists, and honestly none of them were compelling enough to make me want to listen. Some of the lists had some good songs—for instance, Chris Christie chose two standouts: Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen) and And She Was (Talking Heads), and Cornel West came through with Love Supreme (John Coltrane), and Mississippi Goddam (Nina Simone).
Despite a few good songs here and there, in general, the lists lack imagination—they are all full of popular songs that took little to no thought to gather. And some were just shockingly bad—Vivek Ramaswamy only chose eight songs, and two of them were by Imagine Dragons. (He also chose a couple of good songs, too, including Dolly Parton's Jolene and Eminem's Lose Yourself (because of course he did), which Eminem has told him to stop using or performing.
Not that any of this matters—I'm not voting for people based on their music tastes. But for the record, Obama still beats them all, music-wise.
