Secretary of State Antony Blinken really wants to let the world know that having a world-important job has not impeded him from doing cool things like playing the guitar. In fact, he has used his station to play at Foggy Bottom and in a quick guest spot with the house band on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Just this week, he was in Kyiv playing “Rockin’ in the Free World” in an act of allyship with Ukraine and boomer defiance against Russia.
Blinken really should not be doing this. As many have pointed out, these concerts are destined for future documentaries of the era; the videos of the the nation’s chief diplomat on his Stratocaster will be placed just before the violence of the U.S.-funded wars in Ukraine and Gaza. His most recent song choice also makes no sense. “Rockin’ in the Free World” describes America’s offer of a “kinder, gentler machine-gun hand” and reckons with our role in the world: “Don’t feel like Satan, but I am to them / So I try to forget it any way I can.” (Unsurprisingly, he is not the only American political figure to use the song anyway.)
Most of all, though, Blinken should not be doing this because he really sucks at guitar. I mean, he really, really sucks. He would be kicked out of a weeknight cover band for dads if not for his diplomatic pedigree. To understand, let’s take a look at his three most recent performances from someone who is just slightly better at the guitar than Antony Blinken.
Rockin’ at the Kyiv dive bar
At the Barman Dictat on the main drag in Kyiv this week, Blinken played rhythm guitar on the anti-patriotic hit Neil Young wrote when his 1989 concert in the Soviet Union was canceled. This is not a difficult song. It is made up mostly of a few basic chords that guitar players learn in their first few lessons that are fun and easy to play. Still, Blinken looks extremely unsure in his playing, which is not great. Confidence and timing are just about the only things you need in a rhythm-guitar player, aside from getting the chords right. He is not digging into the riff. He is nowhere near the pocket. He is far from locked in.
The Hoochie Coochie secretary
Blinken’s job was a lot easier back in September 2023, when he did his Muddy Waters cosplay at a State Department event launching a global music diplomacy initiative. That night in D.C., he was singing on “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man.” In theory, it is also a really easy song — a blues standard riff that is not a challenge to sing to while playing. But Blinken is hanging onto these chords for dear life.
Blinken counts out, “one, two, three,” as if he is going to play a little lick by his own on the next count. But he immediately flubs the intro, leading to panic in his guitar player’s eyes. Just a few seconds into the song, it looks like the secretary gives a nod to his guitar player, who then turns up his own amp so that it’s pretty much the only thing you can hear. At this point, Blinken basically stops playing his guitar. This all takes 13 seconds, which must be an eternity onstage. About 30 seconds later, it really looks like the guitar player turns down Blinken’s amp so that it’s just barely audible.
One has to assume that speaking at length in public and on television as the most powerful diplomat in the world would kill Blinken’s stage fright. So, in my estimation, he’s not geeking out because he’s in front of an audience. He just really sucks at the guitar and is having fun despite sucking really hard. At the end of “Hoochie Coochie Man,” he’s clearly having a blast sauntering over to the drums to signal for the band to end all at once. Not everyone is having this much fun. One of the horn players is covering her ears.
Turning all the way down on late night
In May 2022, Blinken went on Colbert to do a little PR in the early days of the war in Ukraine. As a treat, Blinken got to play with the house band as they played into a commercial. Well, kind of. In the clip, which begins at 4:46 in the video below, Blinken’s guitar is clearly not plugged into an amp that is on.
I do not know Blinken, but I do know his type: a man who is more into the idea of the guitar than actually sitting down and learning how to play it. The role of the secretary of State is not to play the guitar poorly on diplomatic trips abroad, but to project confidence in the world. In that light, he should stop playing the guitar without confidence. Anytime he feels the urge to play in public, he should just practice instead.
