Skip to main content

Jam out to the sweet sounds of Barack Obama’s summer playlists


President Obama may have his hands full with the responsibility of governing the most powerful nation on earth, but he still appreciates some hot summer jams.

The White House has officially dropped Barack Obama’s first summer “mix tapes” via Spotify playlists (listen below) — ripe both with classic artists like Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, and John Coltrane as well as contemporary stars like Beyonce, Coldplay, and Florence and the Machine. The lists were “hand-picked” by the president, according to a White House blog post, and feature a wide variety of popular genres.

Recommended Videos

“Today, the White House joined Spotify — and our inaugural playlist was hand-picked by none other than President Obama,” White House reps said. “When asked to pick of his few of his favorite songs for the summer, the President got serious. He grabbed a pen and paper and drafted up not one, but two separate summer playlists: One for the daytime, and one for the evening.”

We’ll let Obama slide for focusing mostly on classics from our parents’ generation. After all, the 44th President of the United States is a 54 year-old with two children. And yet, he’s still hip enough to profess his love for Justin Timberlake, rising R&B diva Lianne La Havas, and indie rockers Okkervil River. (New York Magazine’s Vulture had a less wholesome approach, dubbing his Night playlist Barack Obama’s summer sex playlist.)

After all, it’s refreshing to think that even the President enjoys making a killer playlist during his time off, even if his Martha’s Vineyard vacation is a little more lush (and newsworthy) than ours. It’s also interesting that Barack Obama (or more likely his aids) is a Spotify fan over, say, Apple Music.

There’s more playlists coming from the White House, so be sure to follow them on Spotify if you want to hear the musical soundtrack of our nation’s leaders.

Be sure to check out all the DT Playlists on our official Digital Trends Spotify page.

Chris Leo Palermino
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Chris Leo Palermino is a music, tech, business, and culture journalist based between New York and Boston. He also contributes…
What is spatial audio? The 3D sound experience fully explained
Person listening to spatial audio using Apple AirPods Max headphones.

Since Apple added “spatial audio” to the Apple Music streaming service and the AirPods family of wireless earbuds and headphones in 2021, it feels like you can’t read about new audio products or services without running into that term. And just a few short years later, it’s seemingly everywhere.

This has led to a lot of misconceptions about what spatial audio is, how it works, and why you need to hear it for yourself. People often ask, “If Apple created spatial audio, why are other companies claiming they do it, too?” The answer is that Apple didn’t create it, and you certainly don’t need to own its products to experience spatial audio.

Read more
How to download music from SoundCloud on desktop and mobile
Soundcloud Interface on a Macbook.

If you’re a huge music fan, you’ve probably combed through the many playlists, artists, and albums of your Spotify or Apple Music subscription. But what about all the indie artists of the world? Some music-streaming platforms are better than others at celebrating the
‘unsung gem’ acts, but one of the most reliable forums for new, off-the-grid tunes is SoundCloud.

Founded in 2007, SoundCloud has always prioritized music that’s a bit under the radar. With over 320 million tracks in its library, the platform will even let you download a majority of its songs and albums.

Read more
The best kids headphones of 2024: for fun, safety, and sound
Two kids using the Puro Sound PuroQuiet Plus to watch something on a tablet.

Kid-friendly consumer tech is all the rage these days, so it’s no surprise that there’s an entire market of headphones designed exclusively for young ones. But when we think “kid-friendly,” sometimes we imagine products that are built to be a bit more throwaway than their adult counterparts. That’s not the case with the products on our list of the best headphones for kids, though.

We want our child-tailored headphones to include parental-controlled volume limiters, to ensure our children aren’t harming their eardrums. Pretty much every entry on our list checks this vital box, but we also wanted to point you and yours toward products that offer exceptional noise-canceling, built-in mics for phone and video calls, and long-lasting batteries for schooldays or a long flight.

Read more