Barack Obama's summer playlist

Barack Obama's summer playlist is an annual music playlist curated by former President of the United States Barack Obama. The president has shared a playlist, curated by himself, most summers since 2015. The lists consist of a mix of classic and contemporary songs spanning a variety of genres. The response to the playlists has been mostly positive, though with some noted detractors.

History

Barack Obama shared his first summer playlists in August 2015, while he and his family were on vacation in Martha's Vineyard. The selection came in two lists, "Volume 1: Summer Day" and "Volume 2: Summer Night". The playlists were the first posted to the White House's official Spotify account.
Other playlists Obama has shared include a Christmas music playlist released on Christmas Eve 2015 and a workout playlist commissioned by Wired in October 2016. In 2018, the president's wife Michelle Obama released a Valentine's Day playlist called "Forever Mine".
In 2017, Obama jokingly said he wanted a job at Spotify after his presidency. In response, Spotify posted a job listing for a "President of Playlists", with listed requirements including "at least eight years' experience running a highly-regarded nation... a friendly and warm attitude, and a Nobel Peace Prize". Spotify CEO Daniel Ek tweeted a link to the listing to Obama, saying "I heard you were interested in a role at Spotify. Have you seen this one?" The following year, Barack and Michelle signed a multi-year podcast production partnership agreement with Spotify through their production company, Higher Ground Productions.

Curation

Obama curates the playlists himself, which he says people have expressed doubt about. In an interview with Hasan Minhaj, he said "People believe the books and the movies, but the playlists, they somehow think... and this is somehow coming from young people like you. Somehow y'all think you invented rock and roll. You invented hip hop. And so the fact that my lists are, you know, pretty incredible, people seem to think, 'Well he must have had some 20-year-old intern who was figuring out this latest cut.' No man, it's on my iPad right now." He admitted to taking suggestions, saying "it's not like I got time to be listening to music all the time. So typically at the end of the year what happens is folks will be like, 'Man, you need to listen to this. This is good.' But unless I'm actually listening to it, watching it, reading it, I won't put it on there."

Response

's Will Sheff responded positively to being included in 2015. Low Cut Connie also responded positively initially, though two years later, the band's frontman Alex Weiner reported having seen no change in their career success after the inclusion. The Verges Kaitlyn Tiffany called the list "carefully and painstakingly crafted to cover every major genre of American music", but was disappointed by the exclusion of the One Direction song "Drag Me Down", noting that One Direction member Niall Horan "could be recognized as the biggest Barack Obama fan in the world."
In a 2016 piece for The Guardian, Rebecca Carroll wrote about how that year's playlist was symbolic of Obama's reaffirmation of his Blackness. She said there was "no black cultural marker more abiding than our music". She highlighted his inclusion of the Aloe Blacc song "The Man" which she called "a bonafide black man's anthem"; and the song "I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By" by Method Man featuring Mary J. Blige, where she compared Obama's relationship with his wife Michelle to the one depicted in the song's music video, "the blackest, most glorious, magnificent display of camaraderie, love and loyalty."
Multiple Twitter users responded negatively to the inclusion of Wale's song "LoveHate Thing" on the 2016 list. Wale responded to one user in particular with a long rant, calling them a "culture vulture" and threatening to physically attack them. In December, J. Cole released the song "False Prophets", the second verse of which fans speculated could be about Wale as it describes a rapper who struggles with the opinions of critics and fans. Wale responded with a freestyle, "Groundhog Day", in which he confessed to struggling with mental illness and discussed Cole's place in his career history. At the end of the song, he says the line "See you at the game"; later that night, Cole and Wale were photographed together at a North Carolina State basketball game.
Following the inclusion of the Boygenius song "Not Strong Enough" on the 2023 list, band member Lucy Dacus responded in a tweet with the words "war criminal :(".
Multiple publications and numerous social media users singled out the 2024 list for not including pop singer Chappell Roan, who had significant success in 2024, including her album The [Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess] reaching the top three of the Billboard 200 albums chart and the single "Good Luck, Babe!" reaching the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100. The social media response led to the words "No Chappell Roan" trending in Twitter's politics category.