"Uncool" music you dig. Out with it!

i would have thought Sarah McLachlan would be considered prime MOR Radio 2 approved and hence deeply uncool. What does uncool mean, therefore?

"Fashionably attractive or impressive" is what my dictionary says and how I've been interpreting it. Idk about now but I really felt like I was missing out by not getting, and frankly hating, her at the time. I can see Styx being mainstream school-dance cool in 1981 but not today. Lots of people like them but it's not an appreciation I see as being especially attractive or impressive to anyone: a bit old and geeky for a mainstream pop or rock listener; mainstream, safe, and a bit retrogressive for a prog snob; goofy-looking dudes.

And I'm realizing that is the most I want to think about coolness in music for the next year.

the sarah mclachlan reappraisal is at least two years overdue

― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, September 14, 2017 3:32 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is exactly right, as proved by this screenshot of my soulseek downloads folder in january 2015 with Mirrorball on it:

hi flopson

paula cole

i saw sarah mclachlan on tour for solace in 1992; she was pretty grebt

jon secada - just another day

― plp will eat itself (NickB), Wednesday, September 13, 2017 11:31 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this song rules, too

I listen to much more old 70s bluzy hard rock or southern rock like Foghat, Rick Derringer, Marshall Tucker Band, Nazareth and Black Oak Arkansas than is probably normal. ILM in general isn't all that 'into' white dudes playing blues rock, although it likes old thuddy stuff. There are some around here that dig old 70 fusion, so there are some fans around here, but I have listened to it a ton too. I'd say the most unkool ILM band I have heard quite a bit is probably Black Label Society. It is totally obnoxious music and definitely not liked by many.

Dude Black Oak Arkansas is the shit! This absolutely rips:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=407lz-x_MiQ

Uncool music I dig-out with it: Spoon, the Ace of Spades, Dig

jon secada - just another day

since i wrote that i can't stop jamming it on my headphones at work. it's amazing!! but i get deeply paranoid that someone might hear what i'm listening to, i have to keep checking it's not coming out of the speakers somehow by mistake. i think i'm going to have to go for a drive somewhere remote just so i can crank it up loud in safe surroundings

it is all the very worst bits of shopping mall trance beats, michael bolton-style wounded manbaby bawling and chintzy bruce hornsby piano and i really love it

I think I like REO Speedwagon but I need to hear more of their oeuvre. Going to scour charity shops for secondhand copies of their albums.

I like that Jon Secada song quite a lot. It's one of those 'coming in from the cold' songs, like 'Wonderful World', 'Don't Look Any Further' and 'Running Up That Hill'

'Wonderful Life' by Black, not 'Wonderful World'

Try and beat this uncoolness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ah2I166f_U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtF80UCgarY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC2ihnPXXi4

Note for when the links die: that was GI Joe animated movie intro, Soul Edge intro and Psychic Force intro.

I'll nerd you one better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnakUvv2U-Y&t=37s

When I was a kid I was obsessed with these then-untranslated tactical RPGs from the 90s. You could choose a path where you march on heaven and kill God, so man and demon could live in harmony free from servitude and oppression.

Never saw anything like that in a video game at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnakUvv2U-Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2O9ryz7Eik

In 1982 i was on a field operation in south Korea as a Marine, Me and a friend got to go out to a small village for a little R&R before anybody else on our base, wandering around we came upon a mud and straw building, but on the inside you could hear loud music we opened the door and Rosanna was playing on a system that was worth more than the building itself, there was about 8 working girls sitting around talking we stayed all afternoon drinking beer and enjoying the company of those fine lady's.

Der Langrisser doesn't have embarrassing vocals that would have people at a cool party climbing up walls.

Hokuto No Ken/Fist Of The North Star soundtrack You Wa Shock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxkezvGwI20

I think Christmas music is often the height of uncoolness.

Nada Surf. Probably the most "uncool" band I've stuck with since their first lp. Feels like dad-rock avant là lettre, in that I'm not a dad yet, but I grew up with these guys since both they and I were teenagers. And their music is still thoroughly uncool, unnoticed, unreviewed, completely outside of the reviewers eye. I get why. Which is what makes it so uncool. But boy are they consistently great at what they do. Every new album. It's not even by choice; we'll grow old together in spite of each other.

I heard a busker singing "Wind of Change" earlier and it made me so happy

I can see Styx being mainstream school-dance cool in 1981 but not today.

In 1981 you'd have Styx playing out on your driveway while you had your driveway barbecue going, it was great, man, I was there. Wasn't old enough to go to school dances then, though.

Also, where does They Might Be Giants fit in here? I still really like those records A LOT. The difference is, I like Styx records and enjoy that they're in no way cool, while They Might Be Giants records are, in my view, extremely intrinsically cool records that cool people largely never got into and which are thus not widely thought of as cool, quite the opposite in fact.

TMBG are really awesome but they do have a bit of a nasally singing voice and have the classic nerd look down. the music is extremely good -- coolness really has nothing to do with music quality imo.

first time i heard them was "Particle Man" on Tiny Toons and that is probably as uncool as you can get lol.

I used to love the most saccharine-laced love songs released during the 80's, which I blame by growing up in that decade. Just to let you know I'm not equivocating, 80's-era Genesis ("Hold on My Heart") and Richard Marx's "Angelia", which lets be honest, is kind of a badass Def Leppard B-side, is two songs that I bet I'd still love if I fired up again.

Speaking of Richard Marx - the epitome of uncool - the song "Hazard" is fucking brilliant. I mean, it essentially portrays the Tim Robbins' character in Mystic River a decade before it happens; not in every element, but the general gist.

Everyone likes "Hazard" iirc.

Is there still such a thing as uncool music?

????? explain...

feel like uncool music is more music you feel embarrassed about when played in the wrong company, than any music being uncool

^ otm

"uncool" is relative

OBVIOUSLY

i don't know about that... we've got a pretty good list goin here!!

exactly

ah a thread about what's cool! can't wait to post

wheeeeeeeee!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjoJlM2r3qs

Amazed I didnt post this abomination.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsfhADiaP5E
For anyone who doesn't know, the Marvel Vs Capcom 2 soundtrack is widely considered terrible and terribly fitting for the game. But the select screen music caught on to people and became a kind of guilty pleasure.

I prefer the select music from the previous game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxMdFMJdeYg

I wonder how many people request the most embarrassing or inappropriate music for their funeral just to make their family and friends squirm?

i was rocking the second stealers wheel album a couple days ago

maybe that's actually cool, but if it is i'm insufficiently cool to know this, so i would argue it counts

Ben Folds Five

― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Wednesday, September 13, 2017 8:57 AM (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Playing this morning for the first time in a long time, and yeah, same.

i can't say i ever listen to ben folds five but i will always have a soft spot for them as the epitome of freshman year of college music

First album in particular is just stacked top to bottom with hits. The playing is ragged and loose but accomplished, the vocal parts surprisingly challenging, the lyrics unserious but smart... Folds is a knob but the band had something no other band of their era (or since?) had.

Third Eye Blind is not a band seen by anybody as "cool", but boy I sure love that first album.

yeah I've never cared about Ben Folds solo career, but those first two BF5 albums are classic

The first two Dido albums are absolutely fantastic.

Never listened to a Dido album but could absolutely see that. Will give them a go.

Country music -- I really like a couple Sara Evans albums and she's definitely not one of those country artists who would ever show up in respectable year end lists plus she's pretty MAGA. Little Big Town is frequently pretty great, they have some really stunning tracks and some good albums but nobody outside of country music fans seems to give them much notice.

I still like Tranceport by Oakenfold.