Barack Obama will make you cringe: Renegades: Born in the USA reviewed

Barack Obama wants the world to know how much he loves singing. In his new podcast, which takes the form of a series of conversations with Bruce Springsteen, he’s rarely without a tune on his lips. ‘Further on up the road…/ you been laughing, pretty baby…’ A shower-singer, a bedroom warbler, an Air Force One air guitarist with an okay voice, the former president is proof that you really can be embarrassing without feeling an ounce of embarrassment.

Oh, to have seen his daughters’ faces when he broke into ‘Let’s Stay Together’ in front of Al Green. The sound team at the fundraiser in Harlem urged him to do it, he tells Springsteen, but no one’s buying it. We’re not five minutes into the third episode before he’s crooning ‘Let’s Get It On’ and ‘Me and Mrs Jones’ — songs he’s been practising, to the bemusement of his grandmother, since he was ten years old.