Barack Obama Has A Bunch Of Aussies On His Favourite Songs Of 2021 List
Turns out the former US President loves 'Gold Chains' as much as the rest of us.
It’s the most marvellous time of the year: list season.
There is nothing better than seeing art celebrated in such a profound and uniform way, with minor voices being uplifted and major voices being unpicked and analysed. And how wonderful it is to see how different everyone’s lists are; to be reminded once again of the multitudinous voices that art speaks in. There’s no one piece of music that will be adored by everyone, and even those with largely similar tastes will deviate from each other in exciting and novel ways.
That was the thinking, at least, behind Junkee’s own list of the best albums of the year, a celebration of the different ways that we can be moved by music. There’s no one way to create a great album — each is different and important in its own unique way.
Now, former US President Barack Obama has stepped into the fray, dropping his favourite books, songs, and movies of the year.
These lists are usually pretty disappointing and bland — Obama is, after all, part of a massive PR machine that began whirring its wheels before he even took to office. “Look, I’m just like you,” he attempts to prove each year. Hence his list of books of the year contained pretty much every non-fiction best-seller published, and his movies of the year were exclusively critical darlings (pretty funny, however, that he included The Card Counter, a film about the psychological harm of sustained torture, something his government was known for perpetuating).
But hey! At least the song list is slightly more interesting than usual, most notably because it contains two Aussies: Genesis Owusu and Courtney Barnett. Yep, Obama adored ‘Gold Chains; by the former and ‘Write A List Of Things To Look Forward To’ by the latter.
I’ve always enjoyed listening to a wide variety of music, so it’s no surprise that I listened to a little bit of everything this year. I hope you find a new artist or song to add to your own playlist. pic.twitter.com/g6kBzAbrZG
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 17, 2021
Oh, and Mitski, pretty goddamn weirdly. Just goes to show, even alleged war criminals need to listen to songs about heartbreak!