Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama in 2008.Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
“Further on up the road, you— I forget that last line,” he jokes, giving a few “uhs” here and there, getting into Springsteen’s playing. “Sounds alright, though!”
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Bruce Springsteen (left) and Barack Obama (right) in 2012.Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post via Getty Images
From left: JAY-Z, Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen.
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Springsteen tells Obama about how he was also “a creature of Top 40” as a child, sharing how he learned the blues from his mother having the radio on in the mornings.Later, he got into more “fatalistic” folk-country artists like Woody Guthrie in his late 20s and early 30s and that helped rejuvenate his career, he says.
As for Obama, the former president gives his podcasting partner a few examples of how music played a vital role during his eight years in the White House.He says he and First LadyMichelle Obamamade an effort to have music nights at the White House, from motown to country.
The live music series at the White House featured musicians playing from different genres, such as a country singer playing an R&B song, President Obama says, in order “to emphasize and underscore how all these traditions in fact do blend together.“Obama also shares an archived clip of himself singing Al Green’s “I’m Still In Love With You” during a speech at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in New York City, while sharing a deeply emotional tale about how he came to the decision to famously sing “Amazing Grace” during his eulogy after the 2015 Charleston, South Carolina, church massacre of black parishioners.“It was a moment where you just say, ‘Will words be enough?’ " Obama remembers, noting how “it seemed like every three months” there was another mass shooting during his presidency.Thinking back to that poignant moment during his second term, Obama says he relied on music because it has an ability to capture a “unifying element in America.”
“There’s something that’s there for all of us,” Obama says. “Something that we share.”
source: people.com
