Chuck Schumers Spotify playlist for Trumps 100 days in office: Funny or terrible?

Charles E. Schumer, the Senate's top Democrat, translated President Trump's first 100 days in office into a Spotify playlist — and in doing so either elevated political comedy or helped ruin a good meme.

Let's just see his playlist first. You don't need to need to know the whole memetic history of the 21st century to appreciate there is satire happening here:

“Mama said stop this train.”

“Same old story: You haven't done nothin'”

You read the song titles like a little story. The kids have been doing it for weeks, narrating romances, movie scripts and surreal sexual adventures (this one's safe for work-ish) via Spotify playlists.

Most of the best ones are unprintable here. Schumer's version is G-rated, of course. The senator from New York gets sloppy with the format, though — abandoning the traditional narrative after a few songs to list disjointed titles making fun of Trump.

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Like “Gold on the Ceiling” by the Black Keys. Because, you know, Trump likes gold.

And we can assume Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" and Loverboy's “Working for the Weekend” are jabs at the president's reportedly relaxed work habits.

The meaning of other tracks, like “Pink Houses” and “Three Little Birds,” might be more obscure. (Seriously, if you know what those refer to, comment below.)

Pitchfork notes the inclusion of “Hotline Bling” is a call back to Trump's dance moves on “Saturday Night Live “a couple of years ago, which you should definitely watch regardless of your political leanings.

Rolling Stone was a big fan of all this. “Slyly critical of Trump's administration so far,” they called Schumer's list.

A writer for New York Magazine, however, thought the joke was a “watered-down, political version of the 'I Made My Crush a Playlist' meme,” which we'll fully explain in a second.

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And the Daily Dot was harsher still: “Is there anything more cringeworthy than a politician latching onto a meme?”

Playing Scrabble with Spotify has probably been a thing since the music streaming service existed, but it got popular last month when two love stories were written out as playlists.

First a breakup.

Then a budding romance.

Copycats ensued. Inevitably, so did dark perversions of the original theme.

As happens with any good meme, experimenters began to push the limits — expanding from romance into pop culture references and eventually to surrealism.

The late-April tale of a McDonald's date spiraling into nugget rage and a violent police encounter may have marked the playlists gag's creative peak.

“These memes are at high risk of reaching normie status,” a pretend meme analyst wrote on Reddit, meaning mainstream sites were about to figure out the joke existed (sorry.)

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But it's a law of the Internet that a trend has truly entered its death spiral once a politician gloms on.

And Schumer was not actually the first to ring that bell.

The Canadians beat him by a day.

Speaking of running a meme into the ground, The Washington Post attempted to contact the senator for comment but:

Yeah, the joke's definitely over now.

More reading:

McDonald’s new uniform: hot or existentially depressing?

An updated (and depressing) list of all the April Fools’ pranks on the Internet

Garfield’s a boy … right? How a cartoon cat’s gender identity launched a Wikipedia war.

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