So, I originally set out to do a post on the music tastes of John McCain and Barack Obama, which I sort of knew was just going to turn into an opportunity to mock McCain. Fucking sue me. But then, I ran into this:

[McCain] was trailed by a mob of photographers and Cindy, smiling in a black turtleneck, her hair tightly wound. ‘Very interesting,’ he said, just before someone showed him the Escape Hybrid. ‘This is the future obviously.’ Another Ford executive put him in the driver’s seat of a Focus, which could play an iPod on voice command. ‘Play Abba,’ said McCain. But the iPod did not have Abba. It could play The Doors’ ‘Roadhouse Blues.’

Sweet mother of God. There’s a reason the iPod did not have ABBA and it’s very simple – ABBA blows. Badly. But wait, it gets worse:

If elected, ‘the background music would be ABBA in the elevators all over the White House.’

When ABBA plays in the White House, the terrorists win.

To be fair, McCain was joking about that last part, but this clearly is a problem. ABBA listeners are not fit to be president if for nothing else, the clear lack of basic decency. McCain does, however, have some loose connections with good music through his daughters. His 23-year-old daughter Meghan has repeatedly said that she wants to be a music journalist, and also runs something called McCainBlogette.com which is ostensibly about music. His oldest daughter (a registered Democrat) is a music industry publicist who has represented the White Stripes and Moby among others.

As for the original intent of this post, what the candidates listen to, here’s what I could track down (which isn’t much):

McCain – ABBA, Lauryn Hill, not John Mellencamp

Obama – Jay-Z, Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé, Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye

MP3: