"Uncool" music you dig. Out with it!

"main uncool music for me is probably lots of pre-Britpop UK indie music that is still roundly detested"

names please.

only one post on the revived steve harley thread. ouch.

xp reminds me that I've had an "in defense of Kingmaker" blog planned for quite a while now, must get it finished.

I unapologetically love “Cracked Rear View” by Hootie and the Blowfish. As a Brit, do I get bonus uncool points for embracing the sound of mid-90s middle America.

yes. yes you do. i can't imagine listening to the whole thing. but there must be a reason why it sold a zillion copies.

only one post on the revived steve harley thread. ouch

More on the obit thread. For the record, I don't think Steve Harley was ever considered particularly uncool - except when he did The Phantom of the Opera.

some of these bands I only like a few songs by and a lot of it is more for nostalgic reasons than thinking these bands were actually brilliant, but yes the late 80s/early 90s era bands like Carter USM/Ned's Atomic Dustbin/Senseless Things/Mega City 4/Pop Will Eat Itself/Inspiral Carpets/yes even Kingmaker had a couple of songs I could still listen to

I went to see Sultans of Ping last year (not UK obviously but same kind of thing)

I think Ocean Colour Scene might be the band with the biggest disconnect between how irredeemably uncool I find them (everything about their aesthetic and general vibe is so corny and off-putting) and how much I actually like all their big singles. There were all these britpop bands who were terrible but had one (1) quite good song and OCS were like that except they had five or six. Also, The Riverboat Song is better than Four Sticks.

I like a lot of Britpop stuff that most people would call uncool, I guess.
There's some hippy/festival crossover type stuff I enjoy like The Skints
Most of all, I'm pretty cool though

xp In my "introduce yourself" post 20 years ago, I said BNL was one of my favorite bands. They've fallen quite a bit in my band ranking but there's a good handful of songs I'll still stick up for. And their live album Rock Spectacle is one of the only live albums I love

I feel like a ton of music I loved in high school was uncool at the time (Enya, They Might Be Giants, Enigma, various synthpop groups), but nearly all those artists have been reevaluated and given some dues over the years. Hard to think of anything that has just stayed uncool

Has anyone said traditional Irish fiddling yet? Cuz fellas I love a reel.

Not uncool.

Traditional music in general isn't uncool.

reminds me that I've had an "in defense of Kingmaker" blog planned for quite a while

lol I love Kingmaker, definitely add them to my not-cool list. (They were very briefly cool when they first hit, NME lauded and all that, but they basically got middled out between Madchester and Britpop.)

I've even seen Kingmaker live, TWICE. (once an exceedingly rare U.S. performance)

the two albums by The Lucy Show are two of my favorite 80s rock records. I haven't stopped listening to them since 1985/1986. but i don't know if they are uncool or if its just that i am the only person who still remembers or plays them. there must be a difference between those things.

oh wait duh on the 80s thread i started or maybe the big music thread i just mentioned that i had been playing that first Easterhouse album. surely they aren't cool by anyone's standard. i still love that record though. U2 + Chameleons + Communism.

I owned manai at one point but couldnt get into it

mania

I have defended 311 a bunch, not to say I *love* them but I think they are underrated. FWIW they just did a Tiny Desk concert, which I'm curious to check out.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, March 14, 2024 12:30 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

you should, I enjoyed it a lot. Nick Hexum still has great hair

I think Billy Joel is still uncool at this point but I might be wrong, so him.
Seconding the Al DiMeola reference upthread as I dig all his stuff and it's dollar bin status supports his undesired status.
I also own and love a bunch of Herbie Mann records, including the ones that Sonny Sharrock isn't on.
I feel like it is tricky to gauge the coolness factor of metal bands, but I do listen to a lot of slam metal, which a significant number of metalheads turn their nose up at. I am currently wearing a Waking the Cadaver t-shirt, who might be the most shitted on and mocked band in the slam/deathcore/brutal death metal axis.

Keith Whitley is cool, right?

Jimmy Scott? 90s/00s Dee Dee Bridgewater?

Re ABBA, like everyone else I like the best of their singles. But they are pretty uncool for this:

https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/education/2021/01/21/lessons-from-history-on-abba-and-shareholder-capitalism/

Back in 1982, exports of Swedish pop (read: Abba) were booming, but the local economy was recovering from a recession. The leftwing Social Democratic Party, seeking to overturn a weak coalition government in the upcoming election, had a new pitch for downtrodden workers.

Its proposal, pioneered by Swedish economist Rudolf Meidner, was to force Sweden’s leading firms to give a fifth of their “excess profits” to trade unions. The unions would in turn use this money to buy company shares, effectively handing part-ownership of the private sector to workers. Big business would supposedly be run less in the interests of outside investors, and more in the interests of the little man.

Abba certainly did not find this proposition funny. “It is ridiculous to think [the unions] could take care of the money better than us professionals,” the group’s manager, Stig Anderson, told The Christian Science Monitor magazine at the time. If Sweden elected the Social Democrats, he suggested, it would be akin to voting to go behind the Iron Curtain. An outdoor concert was organised in Stockholm to help finance the campaign against the alleged communist takeover and Björn Ulvaeus, one of Abba’s members and lead composers, turned his writing talents to penning pamphlets about the perils of the policy.

Was this a selfless devotion to the liberal cause? Abba, as chance would have it, had been building something of a business empire themselves.

ABBA are kind of a unique pick here I think, they're still very uncool (does anyone want to admit to liking Mama Mia!?) but they do often slot in as the one acceptable guilty pleasure

The movies or the song? I like the song.

I also feel like "superficially corny seeming thing is actually really great" is a well worn coolness trope (Sonic Youth on the Carpenters is an example) but frankly at this point ABBA doesn't even feel like that to me anymore, they're just a confirmed part of the canon.

“Mamma Mia” is one of my top 50 favorite songs of all time.

Seconding the Al DiMeola reference upthread as I dig all his stuff and it's dollar bin status supports his undesired status...I feel like it is tricky to gauge the coolness factor of metal bands, but I do listen to a lot of slam metal, which a significant number of metalheads turn their nose up at. I am currently wearing a Waking the Cadaver t-shirt, who might be the most shitted on and mocked band in the slam/deathcore/brutal death metal axis.

Oh fuck — someone else on ILX who listens to Al Di Meola and slam metal? Come sit here by me. I buy so many brutal death metal records, almost entirely based on cover art. Waking The Cadaver are awesome.

Once we pretend ABBA is still uncool we're a short ways away from claiming Burt Bacharach is uncool, ya know.

xposts

(xxp) I assume it was the film that was being referred to and, yes, I quite enjoyed it! In any case ABBA are definitely NOT very uncool!

Yeah I don't think Mamma Mia the movie or that ABBA vr thing impinge on their cool any more than that Richard Curtis film and the Cirque du Soleil show made the Beatles uncool (yes yes I know I'm leaving myself open to the obvious zing here).

ABBA aren't "uncool," I think the hang-up is whether they are or were ever actually "cool." I would say ABBA aren't cool themselves — in the way that, like, Debbie Harry is cool — but liking ABBA is cool, or cool enough to not qualify as uncool.

I feel like ABBA are mocked for being the height of 70s bad taste by people that don't remember the general standard of Eurovision entries from back then.

Oh fuck — someone else on ILX who listens to Al Di Meola and slam metal? Come sit here by me. I buy so many brutal death metal records, almost entirely based on cover art. Waking The Cadaver are awesome.

hell yeah, glad I'm not alone on bespectacled fusion wank/braindead breakdown island. I'd always dismissed WTC as a joke based off the old "Shredded Wheat" meme, but after moving to New Jersey a couple years ago, I was compelled to give the local boys a fair shake and now they're a legit fave of mine.

saw a jazz guitarist last night, Stéphane Wrembel, and he talked about his early playing days being a big Al Di Meola fan and then played a ripping cover, all fast runs, was good.

music I like that ain't cool

Kenny Loggins - "Meet Me Halfway"
Boy Meets Girl - "Waiting on a Star to Fall"
New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
Michael Buble - It's Time (ok, laugh it up)
Josh Groban - Closer
Jack Wagner - "All I Need"
the Mickey Thomas Starship power ballads

Oh, Kenny Loggins — I had the 45 of "Don't Fight It" by him and Steve Perry, and I still like that song.

i still like the first counting crows album, that's pretty fucking uncool

New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too

is this considered uncool on ILX? feel like there might be a few people here who dig this album though I can see ILX absolutely hating it

Michael buble seems aight, tiers above Michael Bolton and that kind of ez thing. Buble goes for authentic Sinatra type vibes, yeah?

pretty much. the arrangements are lazy though. and he stole Nina Simone's version of "Feelin' Good"

I would go so far as to say "You Get What You Give" is one of the best pop songs of all time

I unapologetically love “Cracked Rear View” by Hootie and the Blowfish.

My son's new band does mostly originals, but one of the few covers they do is "Let her Cry," it's a fucking amazing song.

xpost amen!

I still carry a torch for very-briefly-hip-only-to-subsequently-become-loathsome-indefensible-punchline bands like ARE Weapons and Salem. Maybe The Streets fit here, too, though I don't think Skinner gets a fraction of the contempt those other artists do

I still like White Zombie and metal-era Cro-Mags, and the Ministry records nobody likes

To be clear, when I say I like this stuff, that doesn't mean I ever actually listen to any of it, just that I can be called upon to defend it if necessary

i feel the same way about Slipknot. i have watched live footage on Youtube and enjoyed it. and watched the videos. they are noisy though. i think that's what makes them more my thing. but, yeah, i don't own any slipknot. i think i bought Iowa when it came out. that's a fucked up album. they actually like rhythm and percussion. that also set them apart from, you know, the usual nu-metal suspects. that and their genuine heaviness.

i stan for KMFDM

KMFDM IS...A DRUG AGAINST WAR

The guitar riff in this is sick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UebEtBB7GlA

I stan for chemlab

Boy Meets Girl - "Waiting on a Star to Fall"

this rules always and foever