NME's Cool List

"Whether it is wearing the right clothes, being magnetically charismatic or deliberately trashing their talent for the sake of it, all of the entries in [the Cool List] have one thing in common – ."

NME's Cool List is an annual listing of popular musicians compiled by the weekly British music magazine NME. The list is created each November by the magazine's writers and journalists, and is based on the 50 musicians that they consider to be the "". Each year's list is first announced by NME through both a dedicated issue of their magazine and their official website, NME.com – the Cool List issue often attracts high sales. The list was first published in 2002, to highlight the people who were "at the forefront of the music scene" – Jack White, the lead singer of American rock band The White Stripes, topped the first poll. Since then, it has been published a further eight times: it ran every year from 2003 to 2011, with the exception of 2009. Musicians such as Justin Timberlake, Pete Doherty and Laura Marling topped these subsequent listings. As of 2013^[update], the most recent artist to top NME's Cool List is the American rapper Azealia Banks.

Alongside the Cool List, NME also often concurrently publishes alternative lists, such as the Fool List, the Had It, Lost It list, the If Only They Rocked list, and the Cool Places list. Fool Lists have included individuals such as George W. Bush and Mark Ronson; Had It, Lost It lists have featured Bobby Gillespie and Richard Archer; If Only They Rocked lists have included the likes of Ferenc Gyurcsány and Charlie Brooker. As well as high sales, the Cool List also generates a large critical response for NME, from both journalists and members of the public: the magazine has received criticism of its lists from various sources, including music journalists, pop stars, and drugs charities.

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