Some full-time music critics spend their lives curating playlists they hope become popular. President Obama has outdone them all in between briefings by senior aides and rounds of golf with friends.

For the second year in a row, he released his summer vacation music lists. And within a day, the playlist was the most listened-to on Spotify, other than those organised by the global music streaming service itself. That level of popularity occurs only when listeners do more than sample the songs, but actually enjoy the set, said Jonathan Prince, a Spotify spokesman.

“For a playlist to hit No. 1 globally on its own out of nowhere is just bananas,” the spokesperson said. “If he wants a job curating music when this presidential gig is over, we’d take him in a second. That’s very impressive.”
While Jonathan said that Spotify could not yet measure how the President’s selections this year had influenced the popularity of particular artistes, his picks last year led streams of the band Low Cut Connie to increase 2,906 per cent overnight and those of the hip-hop duo Reflection Eternal to jump 798 per cent.

He has also got high marks from several music critics for his summer playlist choices, in part because he mostly avoided politically expedient selections. There were no songs, for instance, from wildly popular artistes like Adele, Ariana Grande, Justin Timberlake or Rihanna.

The President’s musical taste — which includes surf rock, soul, blues and hip hop — is open-minded, even eclectic. However, there is one notable exception: Missing for the second year in a row was eve

“This is not a politician’s playlist,” said Rob Sheffield, a music columnist for Rolling Stone. “It’s a list of someone who, if they were a full-time music lover or a full-time music archivist, would be an extremely good playlist.” White House officials insisted that the picks were made solely by the President.

Before playing on August 5 at the President’s 55th birthday party, the singer Leon Bridges said Barack Obama excitedly told him that he had “gotten ready” that morning by listening to Bridges’s Smooth Sailin’.

“I didn’t believe him,” the singer said. “I mean, he’s the President, you know?” But after Smooth Sailin’ was listed second on the playlist, Bridges changed his mind.

Brian Wilson, a founder of the Beach Boys and one of the most venerated American rock composers, said in an interview that he, too, was honoured to have his song Good Vibrations among the President’s favourites.

“I think it’s a good tune, and it’s a good record,” Wilson said of the song, which hit No. 1 on the charts after it was released in 1966 and set a new standard for studio-recorded music.

In 2005, President George W. Bush released an iPod playlist and officials said the process was done largely by aides.

Gardiner Harris
(The New York Times News Service)