LIVERPOOL, England (NYTIMES) - The long and winding road around the world can sometimes feel a little deadbeat without some music - especially for a diplomat who describes himself as an amateur guitarist.
So, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken used The Beatles' home town last Friday (Dec 10) to launch a road trip playlist - tunes that resonate with pit stops on his official travels.
The first line-up is a 16-song sampling of mostly feel-good music from Britain, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand - all destinations where Mr Blinken will visit this week to discuss concerns about Russia, China, Covid-19 and other weighty matters of diplomacy.
He visited Liverpool for a meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of 7 - close allies and major trading partners that account for about half of the global economy - who got their fill of music history last Saturday at The Beatles Story museum.
On his first trip as secretary of state in March, as his Air Force jet was rumbling down the runway and headed to Tokyo, Mr Blinken welcomed his entourage with a few blasts from Rockin' All Over The World by Status Quo. ("All aboard and we're hittin' the road/Here we go," the lyrics say.)
"The thread that runs throughout my life is probably music," Mr Blinken, 59, said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine earlier this year.
The new travel playlist, which will be updated throughout his future trips abroad, provides a glimpse of his personality beyond the business suit. It ranges from The Wombats, an indie rock band from Liverpool, to a sugary groove by Indonesian pop artist Chrisye, to reflective piano solos by the late Bruce Gaston, an American who lived in Thailand.
There are also a few of Mr Blinken's own tracks on Spotify, although not on the road trip selection. Uploaded over the last three years between gigs at the State Department, where he had served as deputy secretary during the Obama administration, they feature Mr Blinken not just on the guitar, but also on the microphone - an unabashedly personal exhibition for someone in a profession that is usually so buttoned-up.
In the Rolling Stone interview, Mr Blinken waxed about his reverence for musician Eric Clapton, whose music influenced him to get serious about playing the guitar. The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was the first album that Mr Blinken owned, he said in the interview, and it was expected that he stop in at some of the Fab Four's old haunts while in Liverpool this weekend.
He is not the only musician among the pantheon of secretaries of state. Dr Condoleezza Rice, who led the State Department for then US President George W. Bush, is a trained classical pianist.
Mr John Kerry, who was the secretary of state at the end of the Obama administration, played the bass in a garage band during the 1960s.
But Mr Blinken may be among the few who listened to post-punk new wave British bands. "Bring on the dancing horses/Wherever they may roam" Echo and the Bunnymen, which got its start in Liverpool, sang in 1985.
They made the cut on his playlist.
