On The Standard’s music podcast “Life in Seven Songs,” we ask some of the world’s most fascinating people: What songs tell the story of your life?
Long before he became the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara was a first-generation Indian immigrant, listening to Bollywood music and Queen in his childhood home in suburban New Jersey.
“[My father] was one of 13 in India, and the first person in his family to go to college,” Bharara recalls. “And one generation later, I became — at the appointment of the president of the United States — the chief federal law enforcement officer in Manhattan. In one generation.”
Growing up outside Asbury Park, Bharara fell deeply in love with Bruce Springsteen’s music — though it was a surprise when The Boss gave Bharara a personal shoutout (opens in new tab) at a 2012 concert.
“I was kind of stunned for a second,” Bharara remembers. “And my son, who was 9 at the time, turned to me and was like, ‘Daddy did he just say your name?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, he did.’”
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Bharara and Springsteen share something deeper: a way of combining sharp criticism with deep idealism about American promise. For Bharara, that stems from his experience as an immigrant.
“There’s something about that experience that causes you to appreciate what you have in America on a much more frequent and daily basis than maybe some people who may forget and take it for granted,” Bharara says. “So I try not to.”
That perspective has shaped both Bharara’s career — as a former prosecutor, author of the New York Times bestseller “Doing Justice,” and host of the podcast “Stay Tuned (opens in new tab)” — as well as his list of seven songs.
In this episode of “Life in Seven Songs,” Bharara talks about how his family’s American dream unfolded across decades, as well as his years fighting Wall Street corruption and organized crime. Plus, he reveals the song that New York Sen. Chuck Schumer made him sing at a company holiday party.
Here’s his playlist.
- Bruce Springsteen, “Thunder Road”
- Kishore Kumar, Mahendra Kapoor, and Shailendra Singh, “Amar Akbar Anthony”
- Queen, “Another One Bites the Dust”
- U2, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”
- Daniel Rodriguez, “God Bless America”
- Darius Rucker, “Wagon Wheel”
- Zeshan B, “O Say, Can You See”
🎧 Listen to the full episode on Spotify (opens in new tab) or Apple Podcasts (opens in new tab)
🎵 Explore the episode playlist on Spotify (opens in new tab)
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