Before he was president, George W. Bush was just a typical, conservative ’90s dad. So much so that his daughter Jenna Bush Hager once recalled him breaking a classic grunge album CD over his knee when he caught her with it. (Spoiler alert: it was In Utero by Nirvana.)
During a 2019 episode of the Today show, Hager and Carson Daly were chatting about parenthood and music. The former MTV host was lamenting how difficult it was to let his kids listen to music because of adult themes and foul language.
“My dad was always so good about letting us listen to music we wanted to,” Hager chimed in. She quickly clarified, however, “I mean he did, and he didn’t…” The mother of three then shared a story from her younger years that has stuck with her.
“I went out with my money. I guess that I got from doing chores,” she said, “and I bought a Nirvana CD. It was one of my first.” She explained that “there was a really bad song on it” she couldn’t name on camera, and that it was “two words.” Together, Hager and Daly figured out that the album must have been In Utero. The logical conclusion here is that the song was likely “Rape Me“.
George W. Bush probably wouldn’t have minded “All Apologies”
Daly joked that the “future leader of the world listening to you listen to that” must have been a wild experience. “My dad heard me playing it on my little Discman,” Hager recalled, and “he broke the CD over his leg.”
She added that her father was “never was mad like that. But this particular song” understandably triggered something in him when her heard his “little daughter” listening to it.
Hager joked that the story is kind of “funny” because other than that one instance, her father had no issue with her music. “When we would drive, he would let me, in our little minivan, put on the Green Day Dookie CD, and he would listen to it.”
Honestly, the Green Day thing is almost funnier. George W. Bush was the American President who was pretty much responsible for launching Green Day’s political activism. His presidency was the inspiration for their American Idiot album. So, to find out that he used to listen to Green Day with his daughter… that’s some hilariously bizarre coincidence.
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