Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama do podcast: Mixed US hack

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Interlocutor on a pontifical mission: Bruce Springsteen (left) and Barack Obama

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Rob Demartin / Spotify

Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen have known and appreciated each other for quite a while.

"I'm the president," Obama was always fond of saying, "but he's the boss."

In an eight-part podcast on Spotify (“Renegades”) with the subtitle “Born in the USA”, the two cultural greats come together again, each for just under an hour… yes, what actually?

Since it was founded in 2018, Michelle and Barack Obama's production company, Higher Ground, has already implemented several projects - including “American Factory”, the Netflix documentary of a reading tour by the former first lady and several films, more have been announced.

Obama gets on well with Ted Sarandos, who is in charge of content at Netflix and whose wife, Nicole Avant, served as US ambassador to the Bahamas under the Obama administration.

The Obamas have more than 200 million subscribers worldwide via Netflix, and the contract for several documentaries and films is said to have a volume of 300 million dollars.

At Spotify, where Michelle Obama is already present with the "Michelle Obama Podcast", there will soon be 350 million active users - monthly.

If Netflix and Spotify continue to grow, the couple will have direct media access to one eighth of the world's population.

By which?

With, as Obama said, stories of "talented, inspiring, creative voices able to foster greater compassion and understanding between people."

He would like to help these voices »to share their stories with the whole world«.

Voices like that of Bruce Springsteen - and he of Barack Obama himself.

Importance of voice and performance for their career

Springsteen is hoarse as only Springsteen can be hoarse.

Obama even speaks in the confidence-inspiring baritone that brought him into office.

As a moderator and narrator, he's the boss here.

He moderates the podcast, he sets the milestones, and he gets Springsteen to speak.

The starting point of the conversation is the feeling of being an outsider, as everyone wants to be in their own way.

Together, Obama and Springsteen conclude that voice and performance were important to their careers.

Just like the "megalomania" (Springsteen) of the idea that they wanted their stories to be heard all over the world.

In the first two parts of »Renegades« the friends talk about their friendship, the friendship of their wives, the mutual appreciation, the number of guitars in Springsteen's house (1000), unfortunately not about the number of his noble jumping horses, for whose purchase the » Boss «occasionally arrives by private jet.

Curiously, it's like listening to a Bruce Springsteen interview where the questioner has an infinite amount of time.

How was that back in New Jersey?

How did Springsteen grow up, what kind of family was it, what kind of milieu?

Curiously, the questioner always puts his own career aside.

That's how it was in Hawaii, that's what it felt like to be the only black kid on the beach.

Mutual appreciation is definitely noticeable, as is the sovereignty of the 44th President of the United States over the course of the conversation.

There is a difference between cultural and political power.

Obama shifts his weight to the cultural field

Obama, who saw through the economy of pop culture while in office and had used it like no other president before him, is now shifting his weight entirely to the cultural field after relinquishing his political power.

Here he will continue to be effective and cover, so to speak, the left flank of Joe Biden on the entertainment front.

That's what Higher Ground is about, and that's what this podcast is about.

Now Obama could probably have spoken to himself or to a single mother with three jobs.

Kanye West or Beyoncé would have been interesting too, but just talk to themselves from a black America.

The choice of Bruce Springsteen, who is considered to be the supposedly authentic chronicler of the "honest" USA of the working class, is just as clever as the choice of country icon Garth Brooks when his successor was inaugurated.

This is one that white America is also listening to.

It doesn't matter that Springsteen - as he himself admitted - only portrayed the worker, never was one himself.

But Obama understands music when he hears it and asks Springsteen about the influences of soul in his songs.

When Springsteen says that the blacks in his high school were "envied and despised" Obama immediately asked: "Envy what?" For their style.

Laughter.

Bridges for a divided country

He also asks Springsteen about Clarence Clemons, the black saxophonist in the E-Street band, and his existence as a musician in front of mostly white faces.

Springsteen tells how it was the other way around for the first time at a concert in Ivory Coast, "a stadium with exclusively black faces".

Clemens approached him and said: "Well ... now you know how it feels".

The interlocutors are on a noticeably pontifical mission, bridges are to be built for a country divided along ethnic lines.

Listening, talking, and alternating between making unity.

Even if only to the point that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Sometimes the conversation is thickened with pathos when historical recordings are made or Springsteen grabs one of his 1000 guitars to sing "My Hometown".

It's all about this.

Kindness as a genre, reconciliation as an entertainment format.

The social question is only touched indirectly, foreign policy is also left out.

When both chat over protest songs, Springsteen thinks of the Sex Pistols before Obama suggests "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday or "Respect" by Aretha Franklin.

There are no songs against the war, some of which Springsteen wrote.

It becomes interesting when the musician asks conversely what conclusions Obama as President has drawn from the history of slaves, how he strives for justice, whether he might even have considered paying reparations.

And Obama says, “In practical terms, that was out of reach.

We can't even get this country to provide decent schools for children ”.

"Renegades" is partly an interview with musicians, partly a later government declaration, and mostly a joint reflection on the state of the nation.

No chatter among friends, but an undertaking of political education, low-threshold and with a millionfold reach.

What is the point, the Telekom, as a sponsor, beats particularly dumb listeners with the fence post in its commercial breaks: "Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Internet were always like this podcast?"

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