What artist considered 'uncool' deserves reevaluation and more respect?

Genesis should genuinely be considered one of the GOAT bands. I know American Psycho did that one monologue on them, but their discography is incredibly strong (outside the first and last albums which barely count).

Phil Collins in general had a lot of things going against him that I think caught up with him eventually. He's pretty average looking (it comes up surprisingly a lot when talking about him with older generations), he was older compared to the other pop stars of the 80s, he was way over exposed on the radio, he made a bunch of ballads that could turn people away if they aren't in the mood for them, and he pushed a production style that was very dated by the next decade. I think now that people aren't forced to listen to him and that the 80s production style had a revival last decade that he's gained a lot more credibility. The rest of the issues were more superficial and don't matter in the long run.

He was also a great drummer and specifically great at building hooks through drums. Not just “In the Air Tonight”, but “Mama” and “I Don’t Care Anymore” have outstanding drum parts. Multiple Genesis/Collins songs have gotten high profile metal cover versions and it’s not a surprise as to why.

i can phil it collin in the air tonight

Yep! I’ve loved Phil Collins ever since I was a kid because he was the first singing voice I could remember as a child and my love for him has always stayed and my family are Phil Collins fans. And his work on the Tarzan soundtrack is amazing, “You’ll Be In My Heart” is such a moving song.

I’ve noticed this in my university students. Phil Collins is one of the few reliable pop culture references of mine they get, and it’s always a solid majority of the class.

I'm one of the few people who got introduced to Phil Collins through GTA. Mad man even played himself in one of those games. He did the virtual video game concert thing a decade and half before Fortnite made it popular

Ever since that, his songs have become a staple in GTA titles. 4 had 'Mama' and 5 had 'I Don't Care Anymore'. There is very little to suggest considering the Miami setting of 6 that his songs won't return in the in-game radio stations.

largely due to his work on the Tarzan soundtrack.

It sounds weird now, but I also think The Hangover helped. I remember that movie producing a ton of memes and references in high school, and the Mike Tyson scene where he gushes over "In the Air Tonight" was a big one. It felt like that took the song from "a thing that came up sometimes on '80s stations, but had otherwise been kind of forgotten" to "a song that came up in other contexts, and was cool to actually like". It probably also helped that, unlike a lot of other kinda-cheesy '80s hitmakers, Collins had a very strong backstory via Genesis, which helped position him for reappraisal (even when he was less popular, I remember people still regarding them as cool, it was just usually more in a "in spite of Phil Collins" way, rather than "in part because of him").

In hindsight, it feels bizarre how huge those movies were at the time, given how aggressively the sequels killed it and how poorly they aged in just a decade or so, but there are a lot of small pop culture trends that you can kind of trace back through it.

this is so bizarre to read as a gen z raised on the early internet. my childhood was full of xillennial nerds on places like somethingawful and cracked.com who all hated phil collins-- he came up a lot as an easy target/punchline, so i just assumed he was terminally uncool from the jump and never had that assumption challenged. only found out he was the tarzan guy because of the nostalgia critic's disneycember. i'll have to poll a few friends about this...

I think people had to be there.

Phil Collins was good, "In the Air" is one of the best pop/rock songs of all time. Genesis was killer in various eras. But by the 90s the guy who drummed for a wildly creative rock band and kept a solo career going strong had left the band and was mostly repeating himself on his solo records. And much like any over-exposure and a feeling that the rich dude ain't trying as hard (and falsely thinking Collins turned Genesis into a backup band for his solo act), there's going to be a backlash.

Also by the mid-90s the habit of cartoon movies making their characters sing at the drop of a hat was starting to be uncool. Tarzan wasn't as well remembered as others at the time, and winning a Grammy for an also-ran Disney movie wasn't cool in the late 90s, either.

FWIW Phil Collins has great music and his work along with 70s Genesis. I hate the phrase "flop era" for various reasons, but yeah the 90s was a bit of a lull for him. It happens. But all of the most annoying Genesis fans who think the band died after Peter Gabriel left would admit he's got talent to spare.

He will always be cool because of that banger album Duke.

I know Tarzan was successful and all but I didn't think it was enough to be largely responsible a quarter century later for " a huge resurgence of appreciation for Phil Collins among gen z".

Abba feels like they also apply here.

Let's be honest, Phil Collins suffered a lot for "Taking Peter Gabriel's place". The fact that Collins' Genesis sound was more pop than Gabriel's experimental stuff also hits. Knowing Collins without the weight of Genesis on your back makes all the difference.

Any musician should try playing Rio. If you're not a fan of Duran Duran after that, I don't know what will make you one.

Wow! What country? The UK?

I’m a big fan of theirs now but it took me a while to actually like their music, I didn’t like Duran Duran at first. I don’t know why but I was never here for it at first but everything changed when I heard Come Undone 6 years ago, and it made me gain appreciation for them. And then I later discovered their discography and it made me a fan.

I used to hate them. As in "turning the radio off whenever their songs would be played" hate. And then a couple of years ago something just clicked.

The first few albums are great, with Rio being brilliant of course.

Come Undone is such a great song. It’s the epitome of early 90s music - in one song. It has that 70s funk that George Michael and Lenny Kravitz brought back in 90-91. It also has that Ace of Base style of dance-pop.

Hungry like the wolf is super fun to sing and play on acoustic guitar, especially if you bust it out of nowhere with a bunch of drunk friends or something. Everybody knows the words and it's so hard not to sing along lol. Song has a really beautiful simple sort of economic construction in that classy pop song way. 

80s homophobia definitely impacted audience reception at the time. Just the fact he was more feminine in his videos was enough for certain audiences to write him off.

Great choice, George Michael is incredible! “Fastlove, Pt. 1” is a masterpiece of pop.

In 100 years people will still know George thanks to Last Christmas

Great suggestion! Something people rarely give him credit for is that he wrote and produced his own music, and played a lot of the instruments himself, similar to Prince or Paul McCartney, yet it’s seldom brought up.

Part of it was the "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" video. In the era of MTV this was one step away from The Archies in terms of coolness. Of course he had good songs, but he started at a deficit with a lot of people.

As far as I know, George Michael was kind of blacklisted in the US after he made a MV critizicing Bush, Tony Blair and the Iraq war, so maybe that's why mainstream doesn't give him the recognition he deserves, pretty much like Janet Jackson's case.

https://youtu.be/ABhZQ_VRbsQ?si=ptjWfipzwLWj5qv1

It's literally just homophobia/toxic masculinity. Nothing more.

I mean he made very commercial pop music. Not really anything wrong with that but it usually docks you coolness points, especially given how edgy and experimental so much of his '80s pop peers were.

THIS! THIS! THIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!

I love them and I think everything from Hold Me Up to Magnetic is worth a listen.

Late 90s "alt" pop/rock got dumped on a lot by the early 00s -- Matchbox 20, GGD, Vertical Horizon, Lifehouse, etc.

I spent a fair amount of time in box stores like K-Mart (RIP), Kohls, Target, and Wal Mart in the early 00s doing menial work. Radio-friendly alt rock was the soundtrack to those stores -- Lifehouse and Train were everywhere. In retrospect that era had some great songs and endless hooks, but there's not an easy way to make the song you first heard at Krogers cool.

It was pleasantly random to see that on Westside Gunn's album 10, there's a massive posse cut at the end of it called "Red Death." The collaborators included Benny The Butcher, Conway The Machine, Stove God Cooks, Rome Streetz, Armani Caesar, Jay Worthy, and finally, Robby Takac of the Goo Goo Dolls. Westside Gunn said all the stuff he recorded in Buffalo was at the Goo Goo Dolls' studio, and the engineer there made the link up happen.

Dude I went to high school with was a MASSIVE GGD fan. Like had a picture backstage with them as his Facebook picture.

Anyhow, he got arrested right before the pandemic because he didn’t understand the concept of the word “no” and that for whatever reason that kind of ruined the band for me. I think it might be about time I brought that up in therapy lol.

I saw him live last year and it was an amazing show!

I only knew his hits and was expecting more of a synthpop show. It was not what I expected but it was good.

My dad introduced me to The Fall, and I’m so glad he did. It’s terrific. I have a habit of listening to some songs over and over for like a week on end (Paint it Black, Mr. Blue Sky, Du Hast among them), and The Fall took that position like a year and a half ago. That song rocks.

Yes and the Tubeway army stuff is gold as well!!

I was devastated when Adam Schlesinger died. Such a huge talent taken much too soon.

Utopia Parkway is one of my all-time favorite albums

I remember buying their single Denise and it sneaks back into my head every so often, a joyous pop track.

I am waiting for that one hit wonderland episode on them so bad.

John Denver will always be cool to me because of this — in the 1980s, when Tipper Gore was trying to stoke panic about “Satanic” and hypersexualized song lyrics, she invited John Denver to testify to Congress, assuming a country boy like him would see things the same way as her. He did not.

Here’s his statement: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/johndenverrockmusiclyrics.htm

As someone who goes to school in West Virginia, John Denver is legit a state hero there.

Annie's Song is one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

John’s music is full of blissful happiness but also full of devastating sadness and loneliness. May I recommend the song “All of My Memories” to the uninitiated.

Annie (as in THAT Annie) grew up the next town over from where I used to live. For several years when they went to visit family in the area he’d play the local college a night or two a year. Not the biggest venue by any means, but to be one of the one of the biggest stars in the world and play an annual show at a college in rural Minnesota is a big frigging deal.

I love the songs “Flying For Me” and “Thank God I’m A Country Boy”, my late mother was a John Denver fan, she loved his music.

I interned at a music studio on Long Island for a couple of years and Julio from Spyro Gyra was one of the go to guys on the line for session guitar work. Incredible guitar player; that guy had such range.

Always loved the B-52’s :) all my homies wanted to do was sing about lobsters and planets and they did their job damn well

Didn’t realize that the B-52’s were ever not cool. Granted, I was a little kid when Love Shack and Roam were on the radio (and still in my mom’s belly when they released… both of those songs had staying power), but I bought their older albums as an early teen and loved them.

The only time they felt uncool was when Family Guy did the Rock Lobster bit and everyone started referencing that song. Once that died down, they were back to cool for me at least.