Birth of the Cool

Fleetwood Mac's Rumours is a great album. It's also patently uncool. If you'd bother disagreeing with either of these statemenss, I'd say that you know little to nothing about what constitutes "great" music and what constitutes "cool" music. I'd argue that Rumours is the greatest uncool album of all time.

I suspect that Rumours may have been cool when it was released, as I think it sold well among 18- to 25-year-olds, who are the coolest people in the world. In fact, I have anecdotal evidence of this--my father recalls he and his friends constantly listening to the album the week it came out.

The former coolness of Rumours is self-evident. It had mainstream appeal as well as the support of young people, and therefore it was "cool." It's entirely possible that my father and his friends were patently uncool when Rumours came out, but my father was an alcoholic at age 13 and he served in the military. He also grew his hair long when he wasn't in the military. Using deductive reasoning here, we can conclude that my father was cool until he turned 26, and so were all his friends.

Needless to say, this album is no longer cool. It has no impact on 99% of popular music today. But it is still great.

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So what makes music "great" and what makes it "cool"? And what do these brandings imply? This is where things get confusing. We'll start with "great," as its definition is crucial to the definition of "cool."

Greatness is not a simple concept. I've written about greatness before, using an alternate definition--transcendent coolness (see: Rolling Stones, The; Davis, Miles). But greatness can also mean the best (see: Beatles, The; Davis, Miles). The latter definition is how I'm referring to Rumours, obviously, since it's such an uncool album. This is what true artists strive for--integrity and quality. That much is fairly simple.

"Cool" is slightly more complicated. The Rolling Stones will always be great because they recorded Exile on Main St. When that album came out, The Rolling Stones were the coolest men on the planet. That album is still cool because cool people still like it. The Rolling Stones are no longer cool, however, because cool people don't like old people (except those lucky few, like Evel Knievel or Bill Clinton, both of whom will always be cool).

"Cool" essentially means "popular with and/or respected by young people." This is obviously independent of greatness, as at this very moment, Fergie and Panic! at the Disco are cool. But more importantly, popularity and success are married to coolness. This is why most popular music fucking sucks. "Artists" would rather be cool than great, because cool pays the bills and great doesn't.

Now that we've done a sufficient job of explaining "cool" and "great," we can categorize the world of pop music by four quadrants:

Quadrant I: Cool + Great
These are the ones everyone agrees on, or at least the people that matter. Michael Jackson is here, Bob Dylan is here, Led Zeppelin is here, and Gnarls Barkley and Justin Timberlake are contemporary examples of this.

Quadrant II: Cool + Shitty
These are the most obnoxious people in the world. They're all very popular, but they don't deserve to be very popular. Aerosmith is at the extreme of this quadrant. Modern examples include the aforementioned Fergie, Dane Cook, and VH-1's I Love the '80s.

Quadrant III: Lame + Shitty
The consensus is that these people suck. Their strange ability to stay well-known despite drawing hatred from every corner comes partially from Generation X's unconditional love of irony, but mainly they're the world's punching bags. Some people like these cultural figures, but those people are few and everyone wonders what those people are thinking. Examples include Adult Alternative radio, Paris Hilton, Creed, and Vanilla Ice.

Quadrant IV: Lame + Great
Generally overlooked, these people deserve much more credit than they're given. Like other lame things, there are always pockets of adoring fans, but in the mainstream most people think they're "weird." This is where Rumours falls, along with Steely Dan, Sufjan Stevens, and Prince. (Note: Prince was once in the first quadrant, but his sound is now dated and somewhat embarrassing. He may very well have been the coolest motherfucker on the planet around the time of Purple Rain, but that time seems like eons ago. Coolness is a volatile mistress.)

***

This is where objectivity and subjectivity collide. Objectivity in music seems like a foreign concept to some. "I like it" is too often equated to "It's good." You might like heavy metal and dislike rap music, but that doesn't make Mudvayne better than the Wu-Tang Clan. This is like saying Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is better than Le Bec-Fin because you're not a fan of French cuisine.

The issue has now become about what "cool" is. I suppose, to some people, "cool" is not what is popular among and/or respected by 18- to 25-year-olds. To some people, I'm sure contemporary country music is cool. I can't really argue that, as coolness is generally a subjective measure.

Greatness, on the other hand, is not. "This song is great" is true or false, with only one correct answer. That is why I can say with factual, objective accuracy that Rumours is a great album.

This subjectivity is what causes discrepancies in musical taste. The Cool + Great stuff is generally well-received by both fans and critics, while the Shitty + Lame gets panned. In the other sections, excessive coolness is often used as a shield for criticism (Franz Ferdinand) and excessive lameness often keeps good art from being successful (say, Belle and Sebastian). But another contributing factor to the discrepancies is the sad fact that, despite its ubiquity, most people know exactly jack shit about music. That's their choice, but then, these people should never bother arguing with me. They have different ideas for what's "great" because they simply don't know what "great" is.

I suppose the coolness of Rumours depends on whom you ask, but realistically, the people who think Rumours is cool aren't really on the pulse of American culture. That makes it uncool.

So where does it rank as a significant piece of music? With a subjective element in the mix, that can vary. But an important component of "cool" that I want to reiterate is that it is married to popularity and success. Some albums, like the classic example Dark Side of the Moon, have prolonged success. I can't imagine that Rumours still sells very strongly, notably among the young people that do most of the record-buying.

But popularity and success, unlike tangible greatness, are often fleeting. So, when ranking old albums, it only seems right that Rumours ranks highly despite its utter lameness, while AC/DC, which judging from Hot Topic t-shirt sales is still somewhat cool, should probably rank lower.

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I heard a radio DJ say the other day that the Foo Fighters rock "without equal," which is obviously a retarded thing to say. But what he really means is that, to him, Dave Grohl and Co. are the coolest rockers on the planet. It's come to my attention that anyone who defines his musical taste by a radio format has no idea what is "great," only a vague idea of what is "cool." I suppose people who say they like "classic rock" think "The Joker" is a cool song, but because it's so fucking terrible, those people are destroying the potential of "classic rock." These are the people responsible for the success of Journey, I think.

The reason I have TV on the Radio's Return to Cookie Mountain as my album of the year is that it is both ridiculously great and marginally cool. I think Final Fantasy's He Poos Clouds and Joanna Newsom's Ys might be better recordings, but they're both unspeakably dorky. If the Beatles had gone for the same crowd as Paul Anka, the world would be a very different place today.

But the world as it is today pays little attention to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, despite all its musical brilliance. And you know what? I'm okay with that. Because without "cool," everyone would be raving about Canadian violinists and prepubscent-voiced harpists. All things considered, I'm more comfortable with the popularity of "SexyBack." YEAH!