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The White House’s weirdly hip record collection

72 points| pausing | 3 years ago |washingtonian.com

42 comments

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[+] boomboomsubban|3 years ago|reply
On the end bit, we already have the National Recording Registry, which this year added "The Low End Theory," "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)," "Bohemian Rhapsody," and "Livin' La Vida Loca." Does the White House need a separate repository?
[+] beowulfey|3 years ago|reply
It’s not really a “record collection”, though, is it? I thought it was more like a Hall of Fame
[+] kej|3 years ago|reply
My favorite story about White House records was from an Arlo Guthrie concert I attended. Supposedly some relative of Jimmy Carter had found a copy of Alice's Restaurant which was left over from the Nixon days, and Arlo's theory was that it explained the suspicious gap in Nixon's office recordings. "There aren't many other things that are eighteen and a half minutes long."
[+] jimmytidey|3 years ago|reply
I've always thought 'apart from the national anthem, what your favourite song' would be an insightful interview question for Trump - I guess because it's so hard imagine him with a hobby that isn't about power.
[+] WFHRenaissance|3 years ago|reply
He plays Hotel California a lot at Mar-A-Lago. A lot people don't know that he picks the music they play there, and sometimes actively DJs. This is not a joke.
[+] boomboomsubban|3 years ago|reply
He'd probably say The Apprentice theme tune "For the Love of Money."
[+] ca01an|3 years ago|reply
He has divulged in the past that “Is that all there is?” by Peggy Lee is his favourite song
[+] motohagiography|3 years ago|reply
As a proxy for popular opinion and orientation to power, music can be a pretty efficient signal though. When you look at big changes in chart positions and whose sentiment it triggers, someone shooting to the top of the charts out of nowhere is a signal of aesthetic direction change that a politician needs to be able to parse to be percieved as "in touch."

Musical taste can also reveal a bit about the politician and how they may respond to issues. The sounds of Biden's peak years were psychedelic and arena rock with an all or nothing protagonism, where the former president kind of peaked in the fern bars of the 80s so there was a smooth new wave/brett easton ellis vibe about the whole thing, where he was aloof and self oriented on the issues. Condoleeza Rice was famously a pianist and admirer of Brahms. It's a bit horoscopey, but musical taste is an honest signal of revealed preferences. In Canada, I get the impression the current prime minister is just really into Sarah McLachlan.

[+] mr-wendel|3 years ago|reply

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[+] coward123|3 years ago|reply
What you are missing here is that Jimmy Carter was a man of the people. A guy who liked rock and roll and a cold beer. He was the ultimate Washington outsider. And buried in the article is an important note about how of course the record collection was whisked away when along came Reagan. So you might see this article not so much through the lens of being about a record collection, and more about a zeitgeist and how it was swept away.
[+] Adraghast|3 years ago|reply
My first thought was that it's hard to imagine most US presidents deriving joy from music (anyone who thinks Obama actually listens to the music on those annual lists his interns compile is naive). So it made perfect sense that once these records got to the White House they barely made it out of the crates before being shipped off to some warehouse.
[+] TulliusCicero|3 years ago|reply
> My first thought was that it's hard to imagine most US presidents deriving joy from music (anyone who thinks Obama actually listens to the music on those annual lists his interns compile is naive).

Imagine being so cynical you think every famous politician is basically a robot. Are you gonna suggest next that they also don't care about the taste of food?

[+] throwawaygh|3 years ago|reply
> it's hard to imagine most US presidents deriving joy from music

They're people, not gods. People like music.

[+] INTPenis|3 years ago|reply
Obama listens to his daughters, and his daughters listen to music. Obama even made a personal message to a couple of reaction youtubers because his daughters watched them.
[+] spoonjim|3 years ago|reply
There are relatively few people in America who don't listen to music, and almost zero black people who don't listen to music. I'm sure whatever is on his "favorites" list is a political calculation, but the idea that he doesn't enjoy music is an extraordinary claim that would need extraordinary evidence.