About

Obama's "A Promised Land" Playlist refers to a list of songs tweeted by former President Barack Obama that he called "memorable songs of my administration." The playlist features songs like "Freddie Freeloader" by Miles Davis, "Halo" by Beyoncé, and "Beautiful Day" by U2. The playlist was parodied as an exploitable on Twitter, with users changing its songs.

Origin

On November 16th, 2020, President Obama shared a playlist of "memorable songs" from his administration ahead of the release of his new book, "A Promised Land."^[1] He wrote, "Music has always played an important role in my life--and that was especially true during my presidency. In honor of my book hitting shelves tomorrow, I put together this playlist featuring some memorable songs from my administration. Hope you enjoy it."

Spread

After Obama tweeted the playlist Twitter users began parodying it by swapping out some of its songs. For example, user @FranklinLeonard^[2] added in "FDT (Fuck Donald Trump)" by YG and Nipsey Hussle, gaining over 180 retweets and 1,600 likes (shown below, left). User @henry^[3] posted an example featuring late-00s indie rock hits, gaining over 30 retweets and 180 likes (shown below, right)

The playlist was also subject to critique from users who found it generic. Jeet Heer^[4] tweeted "Curious about this because Obama's earlier playlists were more interesting and adventurous. There's nothing here that's bad but it is all pretty familiar," gaining over 120 likes (shown below, left). User @Hemingway^[5] tweeted, "None of the songs here are terrible, but this is such a milquetoast, focus-grouped list I’m actually embarrassed for Obama. Putting this list out is like announcing you don’t actually care about music enough to pick anything different or that people might not have heard. Yeeesh," gaining over 200 retweets and 900 likes (shown below, right). Memes and critiques were covered by the Daily Dot.^[5]

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References