Words by Arye Dworken, Brian Howe, Robbie Mackey, and Ashford Tucker
These records are guilty pleasures.
Yes, you’ve seen this before – a magazine with “an essential guide.” Well, recently, a few ‘SUP writers gathered around the water cooler and asked one another; what about the essential uncool records? Who will let the masses know about the important ingredients of every healthy adolescence? Who will compile a list of the albums you bring to the record store but never have the balls to sell (are you afraid to disappoint the guy behind the counter that you own these records… or are you just too hesitant to let go of them?). It appeared the “cool” records are being taken care of… but goddamnit, what about Sting? What about Air Supply? What! About! Billy! Joel! But before we get to the list, though, we must answer what exactly is an uncool record? You know what it is. It’s the record you hide in your closet. It’s the one that is completely bereft of any hipster value. It’s not Abba. It’s not Kiss. It sure as hell ain’t ELO. In fact, in the movie Almost Famous, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Lester Bangs. At one point, he’s one the phone and he says, “Of course, I’m home. I’m always home. I’m uncool.” Well then, below, we give you the albums that are always home.
BILLY JOEL The Stranger
COLUMBIA 1977
A winsome young hipstress recently perused my CD bible, inserting knowledgeable comments like “I can’t believe Pitchfork gave this a 8.9″ and “Have you heard their new one? I downloaded it off of Soulseek.” Nearing the end of the 250+ CDs, she stumbled across my copy of Billy Joel’s The Stranger – which I keep hidden in the back with my Bright Eyes albums; this seems obliquely germane to something – and shot me an incredulous look, as if a turd had discretely tumbled from my pants leg. “Billy Joel?” she said, the words practically italicized coming out of her mouth. She gazed at me with tremulous expectation, waiting for me to clue her in on the joke and replenish my indie cred. I was at a loss. “Sometimes, you just need some Billy Joel,” I ventured impotently. Damn straight, affirms the chorus of those who’ve learned some of life’s more humbling lessons. –Brian Howe
STING Soul Cages
A&M 1991
There are infinite amounts of ways to make fun of Sting. It’s almost too easy. The ex-Police man says he can have sex for nine hours straight. With each release, his albums progressively become sillier and sillier. He’s always babbling about the rain forests and their impending demise. Dude, how about you take up a worthy cause like my insane rent?
But that being said, there was a time when Sting’s schmaltz was 100 percent potent. After having just lost his dad, the man who was born as Gordon Sumner went into the studio and recorded nine tracks of philosophical pontifications and emotional outpourings. “Mad About You” may have been nicked its title from the day’s most popular TV show but, it captured the essence of a relationship (specifically that of David and Batsheba) better than Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt’s dysfunctional pairing ever could. “All This Time” confronted Sting’s dilemma with religion in the time of mourning (“father, if Jesus exists/then how come he never lives here?“) and the heart-wrenching “Why Should I Cry For You?” touches that inner-bank of tears you’ve been suppressing all along.
In this day and age, Sting may have become a parody of himself – a middle aged car salesman flipping through the World Music section of his local record store – but back in 1991, he was killing them softly.
–Arye Dworken
PETER CETERA Solitude/Solitaire
WARNER BROS. 1986
The Karate Kid sucked at karate. Always getting his Miyagi-do ass handed to him by the supremely pissed behemoth shitkickers for – right before the reaper can take his soul back to Reseda – it’s all old-man-bullshit-trick moves while the badass motherfucking bad guy waits in the growing shadow of metaphorical plummeting piano. The crane kick and Rodney Dangerfield arm-flail beats Skeleton Johnny and Ralph Macchio beds a hot Asian broad without paying. My pink fucking ass. All this David and Goliath horseshit notwithstanding, the greatest movie mismatch dear Daniel-san ever faced was of the musical variety. I’m referring, of course, to moistlord Peter Cetera’s 1986 single “The Glory of Love.” This song’s fit for a thousand Bravehearts. And it’s on an album with an Amy Grant duet where she’s totally begging for it. And Cetera’s like, “Maybe, Amy. Maybe next time. Right now there’s a line of trim a mile long outside that’d make Vince n’ Nikki cry.”
–AT
SMASHING PUMPKINS Siamese Dream
VIRGIN 1993
Many denizens of Indieland – which, FYI, is right off the turnpike from Funkytown – will admit to a soft spot for Smashing Pumpkins debut, Gish, albeit usually in a milky-eyed “We like it now because we loved it then” sort of way. Fewer will cop to an enduring admiration for its single-laden, radio-rocking successor, Siamese Dream, writing it off as youthful excess not unlike nose picking or “stream of consciousness” poetry. Whatever, you ghouls! While so much ’90s radio rock sounds as dated as shape-note singing and barbershop quartets, Siamese Dream remains a beautifully composed, technically brilliant, emotionally effective and scorchingly rocking ode to disaffected youth, and we all know that shit never goes out of style. If the part in “Cherub Rock” where Billy stomps on the Big Muff and rockets the riff into space doesn’t make the hair on your neck stand on end, you’ve probably just shaved.
–BH
INXS Kick
MERCURY 1987
Kurt Cobain killed himself on April 5th, 1994. Michael Hutchence killed himself on November 11th, 1997.
Kurt Cobain was the lead singer of the much-revered Nirvana, a band that played depressing and angsty music. Michael Hutchence was the lead singer of the very underrated Inxs, a band that played sexy and joyful music.
Cobain’s biggest hit, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, infuriates and aggravates with its bursting guitars and screamingly shrill chorus.
Hutchence’s biggest hit, “Never Tear Us Apart”, romanticizes and seduces with its repetitious and thrusting love-making keyboards and velvety lyrics.
Ten years later, Cobain is still gracing his fair share of magazine covers, etched forever in a tattoo on the chest of Fred Durst. Seven years later, Hutchence has never appeared on one cover and as far as I know, still has not been tattooed on Fred Durst’s chest. Where is the justice?
–AD
QUEEN News of the World
HOLLYWOOD 1977
Hell, man, with the advent of The Darkness, I’m not even sure Queen is that uncool anymore. Regardless, I’ll venture that while certain Queen albums may be enjoying a renewed cachet, this probably isn’t one of them. Yet, it rocks in the most majestic way imaginable, shedding most of the proggy, “slain by an elf” sort of theatrics that plague Queen’s earlier efforts. While this album will never free itself from the stigma of the dreaded one-two donkey punch of its opening tracks, the scourges of national sporting events and ill-planned political rallies, “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions,” once Queen gets these scrotum-tinglers out of the way (you know you still get a little moist when you hear ‘em), they dig right into “Sheer Heart Attack,” which is as close to punk rock as ’70s arena rockers would ever get.
–BH
AIR SUPPLY Anything
THAT LABEL THAT YEAR
No, really, anything they ever did, thought about doing, thankfully didn’t think about doing, or thought about thinking about doing.
If I were a betting man and this list were a dog race, I’d put my money on those two bitches in Air Supply. The undisputed queens of early ’80s soft-rock, Russel Hitchcock and Graham Russell sired some of the most tacky and cheaply romantic twaddle ever laid down on record. Commonly lumped in with the Captain & Tennille camp of watered down adult contemporary, their goddamn pathetic lyrics were tailored exclusively for goddamn pathetic people in goddamn pathetic relationships.
Be it the tongue-swallowingly sissy “All Out of Love,” or the fey-boy ballad “Making Love Out of Nothing At All,” Hitchfock and Russell bolstered their shameless romanticism with overwrought string swells and gigantic ’80s drums, silly crescendos and ballerina piano. Very simply: everything they ever recorded was overwhelmingly horrible and irrefutably uncool.
–RM
GENESIS Invisible Touch
VIRGIN 1986
And on the Eighth day, God created prog-rock and He said it was good. Fast forward to the future: the year is 1986, and Phil Collins, before his Disneyfication, is on the top of his game. It is the year after his Grammy-winning album, No Jacket Required, ruled the charts with “Sussudio,” “One More Night” and “Take Me Home.” Now, Collins returns to his band, the ever-passionate and crafty Genesis, and incorporates the lessons learned from his solo career – the kids, no matter how distracted they are by Debbie Gibson, still want substance in their pop songs. With Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks as the instrumental accessories, Genesis completely reinvents its sound into a more accessible format. Songs like “Invisible Touch,” “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight,” and “Land of Confusion” feel as thrillingly cheesy today as they did almost 20 years ago. In fact, upon further inspection, the lyrical content of “Land of Confusion” is quite relevant and extremely substantial in an uncertain time like today (“did you read the news today/ they say the danger’s gone our way/but I can see the fire is still alight…too many people making too many problems and not enough love to go around”). It’s only a matter of days until Fugazi or Bright Eyes covers this song outside the steps of the Capitol.
–AD
MEAT LOAF Bat Out of Hell
SONY 1990
It was 1977, the year of the acerbic anarchist and his decidedly badass middle finger. But while Darby Crash was wildly shoving needles into his arms, Marvin “Meat Loaf” Adday, a Dallas-bread thespian who never quite mastered the fuck-you-I-don’t-owe-you-shit-you-fascist-asshole stance – and never really cared to, either — unleashed an unwitting and entirely un-punk masterpiece in the form of Bat Out of Hell.
Teaming with Jim Steinman, a composer who’d already penned a bulk of Bat’s music for a Peter Pan adaptation he planned to call Never Land, the record was big (and lame) in all of the right ways. Kitschy and flamboyant, Bat Out of Hell played out as a mashup of operatic extravagance and hard rock bravado, filled with fist-pumping, epic numbers about love, loss, and backseat makeout sessions. “Heaven Can Wait,” “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”- take your pick, they’re all cringe-worthy masterpieces.
Indeed, Meat Loaf may have been shaped like a pregnant baseball, and he may have championed cheese in the uncomfortably dorky cult-classic Rocky Horror Picture Show, but it was all part of his portly, downright embarrassing, yet ultimately endearing image.
–RM
MIDNIGHT OIL Earth and Sun and Moon
COLUMBIA 1993
After “Beds Are Burning” slumped to the back row of Billboard’s top 20 for a quick spell in the late ’80s, Midnight Oil drifted back below the equator, once again well under America’s pop radar. And, though pegged as a one-hit wonder/novelty act (mainly thanks to lead singer Peter Garrett’s post-apocalyptic look and occasionally ghoulish vocal delivery), the Australian group achieved actual greatness with 1993’s Earth and Sun and Moon.
The bad news first: Earth… is unquestionably guilty of over-ambition with regard to lyrical goals, operating well within the band’s familiar, lofty (and tired) theme of Western progress vs. an idealistic respect for Mother Earth and her modest-living, under-technologized indigenous-peoples. However, no matter how eager, reductive or cliche some of these lyrics appear on paper, the remarkable vocal melodies on this album and the laundry list of tasteful arrangements employed, trounce any argument against Earth…’s viability as a serious work of art. “Truganini” and “My Country” are unforgettable. Yes, unforgettable.
–AT
PETER GABRIEL So
GEFFEN 1986
Eddie Van Halen once said that “Red Rain”, the second single off of Peter Gabriel’s So, is the best song of all time. “Sledgehammer”, Gabriel’s biggest hit, was the most innovative and playful video MTV has ever seen – to use Claymation.
Another song from the album, “In Your Eyes,” made Cameron Crowe’s career the success it is now. Sure, you can underestimate it all you want, but when Crowe directed the sensitive outcast John Cusack to hold his boom-box outside Ione Skye’s window, emo was born.
Considering all of this, and the fact that there’s also a duet with Kate Bush (!), makes So a timeless masterpiece… and also incredibly uncool.
–AD
CROWDED HOUSE Recurring Dream
CAPITOL RECORDS 1996
The corsage, the tuxedo. Arranging for the limousine. Picking her up and looking into her parents’ eyes saying, “Yes, this is the prom and yes, I will hopefully get lucky with your daughter.” Being nervous. Asking her if she wants some punch. Drinking the punch. Noticing that the punch is spiked. Getting more nervous. Everyone is dancing. Having fun. Then the DJ puts Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” on the record player. Everyone is now slow dancing. She asks you to dance. You say, “Yes.” You put your hands around her waist as Neil Finn, lead singer of Crowded House, earnestly sings “Hey now, hey now/don’t dream it’s over.” You’re shuffling your feet along side hers. You step on her toes and apologize. She giggles. You laugh. She looks you in the eyes and your heart drops into your stomach. She leans forward and ever-so-softly kisses you. On the mouth. You will never forget this song. You will never forget this moment.
–AD
