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Guilty pleasures

7 Jul 09 | Re: Musical one-upmanship

So I was listening to the White Lies again, and as their epic 80s sounds washed over me I found myself thinking “These are a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine.” And then I thought “Hey, not everyone has heard of this band, and here am I thinking of them as a guilty pleasure! That means I’m not only cool enough to have heard of a band that not everyone has heard of, but also so amazingly cool that I appreciate them with a certain awareness that they might be a bit less cool than the bands I usually like!”

Note: It was OK to think this, as I just thought it, I didn’t take the next step and go round telling people how cool I was or acting like I was any cooler.

So if you didn’t know, and whatever you think of the White Lies, the updated hierarchy of coolness for Cool Band X, starting with the least cool people, is:

• Complete dorks who haven’t even heard of Cool Band X because they are too uncool.
• Musical throwbacks who have heard of Cool Band X but don’t like them because they’re not cool enough to get their cool new groundbreaking sounds.
• Wannabes who say they like Cool Band X to try and look cool.
• Cool dudes who actually like Cool Band X.
• Cooler dudes who actually like Cool Band X but consider them a bit of a guilty pleasure.
• Directional trend-setting demigods who have already moved on from liking Cool Band X.
• Normal people who don’t care about any of this stupid cool band nonsense and have recently discovered Blur and Bruce Springsteen and are happy about it.

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