Cool Music

For this Tuesday, we read a chapter in “Writing About Cool” entitled popular culture and cool. I thought it was rather interesting. The article talked a lot about popular music and what made it cool. This goes back to my constant debate about whether cool is something that is rebellious, or something that is popular. It seems obvious that the coolest music is the most popular. If many people are listening to it, many people must like it, meaning that the music must be cool. On the other hand, it seems like people are constantly trying to be cool and on the cutting edge by listening to artists that no one has ever heard of before. While this might not necessarily make the person cool, it is definitely and attempt at cool by them.

Another idea similar to this is a band becoming less cool when they’re popular. Many people seem to make the claim that “I was into this band before they were popular.” This claim puts the person liking the band when no one knew about them, and before the band was “cool.” This ironically, is an attempt to seem cool by liking something that isn’t cool. This points to the idea that rebellion is cool. Once the artist is mainstream and cool, you’re not necessarily cool for listening to them, since everyone else is too. It seems that the world of music cool is just as complicated as any other form of cool. Apparently, the only way to be a cool music connoisseur is to like unpopular artists, and the only way to be a cool artist is to be popular.