Does our tolerance wear down as we age? When I was in high school I listened to the Pretenders, The Boomtown Rats, The Ramones and Elvis Costello.
If I was drunk at a party, I might dance to The Commodores ("Brick House") and Lipps Inc ("Funkytown"). But I never listened to Barry Manilow.
I never listened to Boston when I was young, and I never listened to Steely Dan, but I did listen to Styx and Queen. And then many years later, I bought a Boston album and liked it. And I got a Steely Dan album and tolerated it, temporarily, until I hated it again.
But Barry Manilow never seemed cool. In 2006, city officials in Australia used Manilow music to deter kids from hanging around town at night. "But have they thought that these hoodlums might like my music?" countered Manilow. "What if some of them began to sing along to 'Can't Smile Without You'?" Coincidentally, this is the exact problem the CIA has had with trying to drive Osama bin Laden from his caves; the guy just loves "Copacabana."
So Hellboy sings Manilow in the latest movie, it's not like Bruce Wayne will sing "Mandy" in the next Batman movie... he won't, will he?
