Hillary's been on Twitter for two years. She joined Instagram and Spotify three weeks ago, and Pinterest last week.
She's so active on social media that she's in danger of becoming that guy at a wedding who won't leave the single bridesmaid alone, the guy who keeps happening to pop up next to her while she's standing at the punch bowl, or looking forlornly from the stair, or exiting the bathroom. Right after her announcement, she got up to roughly eight tweets a day before settling down to a more manageable five to seven on average. Hillary is a little better on Instagram, but then she does stuff like take selfies with Zach Braff and I start to wonder how connected she is to the voters she wants to reach.
Out of all of these social media outlets Hillary's trying out, she's by far the worst at Spotify.
Aside from sex, there is no more intimate act than making someone a mixtape. Now that only cool surf punk record labels are making tapes, the playlist has replaced the tape as the only way to make someone truly understand the way you feel on the inside. Hillary's decision to start making playlists for the country seems like an amazing opportunity for her to show us her non-robot feelings, to offer us an avenue into her mind, a path through the emotional hydrogen fuel cell that powers her.
But, alas, reviewing the two playlists she's got up on Spotify now, The Official Hillary 2016 Playlist and Team Hillary <3 Team USA, reveals the musical outlet as just a shallow attempt to connect with the youth, and a weird one at that. What 18-to-24-year-old listens to whoever the fuck American Authors is? (I just asked one of our music writers, Lindsay Hood, if she'd ever heard of the band American Authors, since they appear twice on Hillary's playlist, and she said, "No.") But even if that key demographic did know who they were, who wants to picture their grandmother bumpin the same jamz that they listen to when they're warming up for volleyball practice? Just listen to "Believer," the first song on The Official Hillary 2016 Playlist, and try imagining a grown woman "relating" to the lines: "I'm a little bit sheltered / I'm a little bit scared / I'm a little bit nervous / I'm going nowhere. / I’m a little bit slow / I’m a little bit hurtful / And I don’t wanna let it go." (Well, maybe that last one.)
The chasm between what Hillary could plausibly listen to and what the Official Playlist suggests she listens to is too wide. Hillary grew up in one of the greatest eras of American music. Are you telling me she's not gonna drop any Nina Simone on her playlist? Not gonna give a nod to Sam Cooke? We already know she likes the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, and the Doors—she's not even gonna give us some "Here Comes the Sun" or "Can't You Hear Me Knocking?" One of the problems with Hillary is that her rictus smile barely conceals an inner life full of contempt, entitlement, and concerns about money. Wouldn't a mix tape—a real one from the heart—go a long way to challenge that narrative?
