The days of having ‘cool’ musical taste are over. Owning up to guilty listening pleasures is a joy in itself
There must be a circle of rock’n’roll hell full of people tangled up for all eternity in concepts of “cool” and “uncool”. Now along comes U2’s frontman, Bono, speaking on BBC Radio 2’s Piano Room, saying that, as a 16-year-old punk rocker, pressure to look “macho” meant: “I [didn’t] want to own up to [liking] Abba.”
Bono eventually got over it: by 1992, U2 were bringing Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson on stage to perform Dancing Queen. Still, it’s interesting, where do all these self-imposed cultural vetoes, these uptight musical embargos, come from? What’s with the mid- to late-life urge to let it all hang out and ’fess up to past supposed sins against musical taste? Is any of this still a thing?
