At the end of each year, the former US President shares an indie-centric playlist including music, books and movies which have inspired him this year. Such lists have included the likes of Little Simz, The War On Drugs and Mitski.
Back in 2021, Obama shared his favourite songs for that year. See below.
However, in a recent interview wiith comedian Hasan Minhaj, Barak Obama rejected claims that he delegates the task of collating material for his playlist to an intern working for him.
“I do! Listen. I am so glad that I have this opportunity", Obama insisted. "People, they believe the books and the movies, but the playlists, they somehow think — and this is mostly coming from young people like you — somehow, y’all think you invented rock ‘n’ roll. You invented hip-hop".
“And so the fact that my lists are, you know, pretty incredible — people seem to think, well, he must’ve had some 20-year-old intern who was figuring out this latest cut. No, man! It’s on my iPad right now".
“Look, here’s the bottom line of my playlists and my book lists and my movie lists. I am very scrupulous about making sure that this is stuff that I actually like. I will confess that there are times — on the playlists, on the music lists — where I will get suggestions", he added.
“Because 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".
