Saudi Gazette report

JEDDAH — Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is an ardent lover of old Arab music. In a wide-ranging interview with the US magazine “The Atlantic” last month, the Crown Prince spoke about his love for music. He also shed light on his hobbies as well as on some of the unique traits of his personal life.

Speaking about his love for music, the Crown Prince said: “I am not a fan of the new Arab music. Some of it is good. But mainly the old music is better. Also, I like to listen to national music from different countries.”

The Crown Prince also stressed that he reveled in hard work and was comfortable working at a stretch without taking weekly off days for several years in a row. “You know, on the weekend I don’t try to engage. I used to, you know, from 2009 till early 2018, I barely took a weekend off.”

“If I took one weekend in two months, that would mean I’m lucky. I gained a lot of weight. It was tough.”

But since 2018, I started to take weekend offs, when everything was established — good people and good governance, the Crown Prince continued saying. Plans were there and we had just normal daily work. So on the weekends, vacations, I try to switch off. Without that I was going to collapse. And on work days — I work all day.

The Crown Prince noted that he preferred basketball to football as the former game is much safer than the latter. He said: On the weekends, I like to play sports. Actually I do cardio for one day, for like one-and-a-half hours. I don’t like to do it in the gym. It’s horrible. So I do it by playing a game.

“Basketball is my thing for this. For me, I play basketball just for one reason: soccer, you could get injured. And if you get injured you could stop exercising for three or four months. So I don’t want to get into that position. Basketball is safe, so you can move a lot for a good amount of time while also playing a game, and enjoying your time, so that’s really good.

Referring to watching entertainment programs, the Crown Prince said: When I watch movies or some series I try to see something outside my world. What I'd like to watch is something outside this world. Fantasy, science fiction, superhero, animation, whatever.... but something, Marvel or Japanese animation or whatever. So it's like, just get me out. So I do that mostly half an hour a day before I sleep.

The Crown Prince also spoke about spending time on social media and understanding new technologies: I spend 10, maximum 20 minutes, on social media every day. I look through it all — Twitter, Instagram, you name it, all of it. So I just want to be sure that my media team knows that I’m searching myself.

I read Apple News. It’s amazing, bringing all these newspapers on one application. I love it. So that’s one of the things that I read, also a few newspapers in Saudi Arabia, global newspapers. So on social media, I spend let’s say 20 minutes and other media I spend like half an hour.

This is mainly when I eat breakfast with my family. TV’s on, iPad’s on, breakfast is also on. And I just do both or three things at the same time with the family, he pointed out.