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Barack Obama essay: Honoring the Music That Made Us (Rolling Stone, 5/19/26)
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/barack-obama-on-american-music-1235560707/-snip-
Music doesn’t have to win a majority of voters. It doesn’t need to appeal to the lowest common denominator or lay out a 10-point plan. It just has to be true enough for people to see themselves in it. It just has to remind people that they’re not alone in their fears and their struggles, their hopes and their dreams. Great music has a way of helping us feel seen; more than that, it helps us see others, enlarging our hearts and our moral imaginations. That’s how the spirituals preached emancipation before the Proclamation was signed, rock & roll encouraged integration before the Civil Rights Act was passed, and the protest songs got the wrongness of Vietnam long before the government could admit it.
Again and again, music showed us the way. And eventually, America followed.
In the White House, Michelle and I would set aside nights to honor and celebrate the music that has shaped America, from classical and country to blues, Broadway, gospel, Motown, Latin, and jazz. And when we were designing the Obama Presidential Center — which opens in June on the South Side of Chicago — we included a recording studio and a performance space so the next generation of voices can hold a mirror up to this country, with all its beauty and flaws, and lead us somewhere better.
Because America has always been worth singing about — and those songs are a form of faith. Faith that our unlikely experiment in self-government is not yet finished. Faith that America is what we make of it. The songs themselves will keep changing, but my greatest hope is that the faith in our democracy remains the same, and that together we can continue the glorious task of bringing America closer to what we know it can be.
Music doesn’t have to win a majority of voters. It doesn’t need to appeal to the lowest common denominator or lay out a 10-point plan. It just has to be true enough for people to see themselves in it. It just has to remind people that they’re not alone in their fears and their struggles, their hopes and their dreams. Great music has a way of helping us feel seen; more than that, it helps us see others, enlarging our hearts and our moral imaginations. That’s how the spirituals preached emancipation before the Proclamation was signed, rock & roll encouraged integration before the Civil Rights Act was passed, and the protest songs got the wrongness of Vietnam long before the government could admit it.
Again and again, music showed us the way. And eventually, America followed.
In the White House, Michelle and I would set aside nights to honor and celebrate the music that has shaped America, from classical and country to blues, Broadway, gospel, Motown, Latin, and jazz. And when we were designing the Obama Presidential Center — which opens in June on the South Side of Chicago — we included a recording studio and a performance space so the next generation of voices can hold a mirror up to this country, with all its beauty and flaws, and lead us somewhere better.
Because America has always been worth singing about — and those songs are a form of faith. Faith that our unlikely experiment in self-government is not yet finished. Faith that America is what we make of it. The songs themselves will keep changing, but my greatest hope is that the faith in our democracy remains the same, and that together we can continue the glorious task of bringing America closer to what we know it can be.
For Rolling Stone, @barackobama.bsky.social writes about how the power of song has shown the country the way forward.
— Rolling Stone (@rollingstone.com) 2026-05-19T13:26:59.010Z
"Music has always had the ability to speak to us, and for us, in a way nothing else can."
Read the full essay ↓
— Rolling Stone (@rollingstone.com) 2026-05-19T13:26:59.011Z
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