[3][4] In 2018, the president's wife Michelle Obama released a Valentine's Day playlist called "Forever Mine".
[1] Low Cut Connie also responded positively initially,[1] though two years later, the band's frontman Alex Weiner reported having seen no change in their career success after the inclusion.
[9] The Verge's Kaitlyn Tiffany called the list "carefully and painstakingly crafted to cover every major genre of American music", but was disappointed by the exclusion of the One Direction song "Drag Me Down", noting that One Direction member Niall Horan "could be recognized as the biggest Barack Obama fan in the world.
"[10] In a 2016 piece for The Guardian, Rebecca Carroll wrote about how that year's playlist was symbolic of Obama's reaffirmation of his Blackness.
[13][14] Wale responded with a freestyle, "Groundhog Day", in which he confessed to struggling with mental illness and discussed Cole's place in his career history.
[13] Following the inclusion of the Boygenius song "Not Strong Enough" on the 2023 list, band member Lucy Dacus responded in a tweet with the words "war criminal :(".
[15] Multiple publications and numerous social media users singled out the 2024 list for not including pop singer Chappell Roan,[16][17][18][19] who had significant success in 2024,[20] including her album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess reaching the top three of the Billboard 200 albums chart[21] and the single "Good Luck, Babe!"
[22] The social media response led to the words "No Chappell Roan" trending in Twitter's politics category.