NME's Cool List

NME's Cool List was an annual listing of popular musicians compiled by the weekly British music magazine NME. The list was created each November by the magazine's writers and journalists, and was based on the 50 musicians that they considered to be the "coolest". Each year's list was first announced by NME through both a dedicated issue of their magazine and their official website, NME.com – the Cool List issue often attracted high sales.^[2] The first list was published on 29 October 2002, to highlight the people who were "at the forefront of the music scene"^[3][4] – Jack White, the lead singer of American rock band The White Stripes, topped the first poll. Since then, it was 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. The final artist to top NME's Cool List was the American rapper Azealia Banks in 2011.

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