The Un-cool Playlist

1. The Killers, For Reasons Unknown, Sam's Town (Indie Rock)
2. Kasabian, Butcher Blues, Kasabian (Indie Rock)
3. Kasabian, LS.F (Lost Souls Forever), Kasabian (Indie Rock)
4. Ellie Goulding, Anything Could Happen, Now 83 (Indie Pop)
5. Electric Light Orcehstra, Hold on Tight, The very best of ELO (Symphonic Rock)
6. Badiel + Skinner, 3 Lions 98, MOTD Album (Unknown)
7. Mumford and Sons, I Will Wait, Babel (Folk)
8. Chilly Gonzales, Siren Song (Electro)
9. The Killers, Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll, Hot Fuss (Indie Rock)
10. The Beatles, Come Together, Abbey Road (Pop/Rock)
11. The Lumineers, Morning Song, The Lumineers (Indie Folk)
13. Arctic Monkeys, Only Ones Who Know, Favorite Worst Nightmare (Indie Rock)
14. The Wombats, If it's alright with you (Indie)
15. Editors, Blood, MOTD Album (Alternative Rock)
16. Big Pink, Hit The Ground (Indie Rock)
17. Imagine Dragons, Round and Round, Night Visions (Deluxe) (Indie/Electronic Rock)
18. The Stone Roses, Waterfall, MOTD Album (Alternative Rock)
19. Florence and the Machine, Drumming Song, Lungs (Indie Pop)
20. Arctic Monkeys, I bet that you look good on the dancefloor, Whatever people say I am,that's what I'm not (Indie Rock)

Why is the Un-cool Playlist Postmodern?

Firstly the playlist represents a hyper-reality because it is unlikely such a variety of songs would appear every time you wanted them to. Whilst a true shuffle would comprise of every artist before one is repreated, but this is not the case with my playlist, for example where The Killers appear 3 times. Therefore a shuffle represents hyper-reality because in theory we would want all our artists to be played equally, but this isn't always the case and a shuffle can do the opposite of what we want. Such as this sequence from Falling Down we don't always get what is advertised often leading to our frustration and in terms of our music, skipping songs or choosing them ourselves (such as making playlists).

Secondly Michael Smith's (2009) definition of Postmodernism "In terms of literature and media it is generally considered to be anything which makes little attempt to hide the fact that it is not real," can be related to the Un-cool playlist. This is because the shuffle feature creates something that can't be naturally created, because of our subconsciousness to choose our favourite songs again and again. Hereby the playlist is postmodern because shuffle creates a completely random playlist that couldn't be created by humans due to our personal tendencies and preferences.

Finally this can be seen as playlist due the theory of simulacra – simulations or copies that are replacing ‘real’ artefacts. The shear random nature of the playlist subsequently links to postmodernism as it is a simulation that is attempting to replace 'real' artifacts, those being the the playlists we like to create ourselves based on our own preferences.