On Monday noted hair transplant recipient Elon Musk and famously thin-skinned pseudo-intellectual Jordan Peterson called Trent Reznor, the heavily muscled frontman of Nine Inch Nails and an Oscar-winning composer, a crybaby.

Let me back up. As you’re all no doubt aware, Musk tried to claim he was going to buy Twitter to troll Twitter users then got forced by the courts to actually do it. He’s spent every waking moment since making it worse and losing over $100 billion of his own net worth in the process. He’s like Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes if the rakes were business decisions and each one cost $5 billion.

Due to all that, and probably also Musk’s decision to reinstate Donald Trump and his cadre of aspiring fascists, Reznor announced he’s quitting Twitter. As is his right, and as we all should, but as I won’t because I’m a hopeless addict who hasn’t found a suitable replacement yet. Musk’s response was to call Reznor a crybaby and muse to the truly awful Peterson that maybe Etsy is more Reznor’s speed. That isn’t even really a very good insult since Etsy is full of creative people making money off their passions, something Musk has never actually done, since his biggest business successes like PayPal and Tesla were purchased after they were already established.

As I pointed out on (ironically) Twitter, Reznor is one of the most intensely cool people in the world. He made industrial metal marketable, overcame depression and addiction to become a ripped Academy Award winner in his second career scoring movies, and he just seems like an all-around smart dude. So I’m really not surprised that a guy who’s only a public figure because his dad made money off apartheid and a guy who’s trying to turn the country’s future school shooters into a cult would be jealous enough to crack jokes when he left their party.

All that said, being cooler than Elon Musk is not a difficult prospect. You don’t have to be Trent Reznor. You don’t even have to be former Bucs and 49ers quarterback Trent Dilfer. In fact, here’s five more musicians cooler than Elon Musk.

---

Paul Anka — “(You’re) Having My Baby”

There was a time when Canadian crooner Paul Anka was considered cool, but it was about 65 years ago. He was a big star in the ’50s, the teen heartthrob type, to the point he even acted in a few movies. He had a brief comeback in 1974 with “(You’re) Having My Baby,” which is somehow less cool than “Lonely Boy,” and another brief comeback in 1998 partnering with cooler artists like Kenny G and Celine Dion. I know what I said and I meant it.

So why is he cooler than Musk? Because he’s actually a talented singer, and having a passion that you cultivate with practice and hard work until it becomes a career is cooler than trying to buy status. But also because one of the movies he acted in was 1959’s “Girls Town.”

If you aren’t a fan of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” you probably aren’t aware of “Girls Town,” since it’s a bad enough movie to have been on MST3K. It’s possible you don’t remember it even if you are a fan; it was a Mike episode, Experiment 120. In the movie, he’s the subject of the affections of the girls in a correctional facility, including the movie’s star Mamie Van Doren, who was a sex symbol at the time for good reason. The movie was also risque enough that they had to cut a scene where Van Doren sang while in a shower. That’s pretty cool.

Sugar Ray — “Fly”

In an absolute sense, Sugar Ray isn’t cool. It was a nu-metal band, which is hilariously uncool, then sold out to a nearly Smash-Mouth degree in its quest for fame, which is even less cool. The whole frosted tip thing wasn’t very cool in the late ’90s and has gotten progressively less cool since.

But compared to Elon Musk? Intensely cool. Because unlike Musk, Sugar Ray is self-aware. The band knows exactly what it is and what it does, is refreshingly free of delusion and self-promotion. Take for example an April article in Rolling Stone about musicians playing private parties for billionaires. Understandably, nobody wanted to talk about it… except Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath, who’s quoted extensively throughout. And he doesn’t shy away from acknowledging that he’s basically a novelty throwback act and would be a fool to turn down the money.

It’s hard to find that level of candor in America in general, let alone from a musician. It’s impossible to find that from Elon Musk.

---

Pat Boone — “Tutti Frutti”

Pat Boone is a man without many redeeming qualities. He’s a contemporary of Paul Anka who made his name in the ’50s with profoundly lame covers of songs he stole from Black musicians, like his agonizing cover of “Tutti Frutti” I subjected you to above. He’s been a member of the fringe Christian right since before that was even a mainstream thing, from refusing to star in a movie with Marilyn Monroe because she wasn’t ashamed enough of her sexuality to supporting Barry Goldwater for President in 1964 to teaming up with Mike Huckabee to oppose a California bill making it illegal to discriminate against people when hiring in colleges.

So how does someone of Muskian repute somehow become cooler than Elon Musk? Because of his 1997 album In a Metal Mood, in which he switches from stealing songs from Black people to stealing songs from heavy metal musicians. I am not making this album up. He covers everything from AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top” to Ozzy’s “Crazy Train” to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” He even covers a Judas Priest song, which I guess means he’s loosened his standards about who he associates with.

I don’t know if he did something absurd on purpose or if he thought it was cool, but even attempting it makes him cooler than Elon Musk.

Tiny Tim — “Tip Toe Thru’ The Tulips With Me”

If you’ve never heard of Tiny Tim, listen to that song above, which was his most famous. That’s what his music sounds like.

He was briefly huge in the late ’60s and his wedding was watched by an estimated 40 million people on the “Tonight Show.” Then he wasn’t huge anymore. He continued to be around, but his international acclaim was fleeting. He’s cooler than Musk because he did what he loved even if it was unorthodox and outlandish. He’s a man who didn’t care what people thought, and he followed his passion and people appreciated it. Musk, constantly all but begging the world for attention, would never understand doing something just for the love of doing it, and that’s why he’ll never be Tiny Tim cool.

Also, Tiny Tim was a clown in the 1987 low-budget horror movie “Blood Harvest.” That’s cool.

---

KC and the Sunshine Band — “Get Down Tonight”

Disco is, famously, not cool. Some disco musicians are cool. Donna Summer is a prime example, but I don’t think anyone would claim Harry “KC” Casey is one of them. But he’s way cooler than Elon Musk for two key reasons.

First, KC and the Sunshine Band may be disco, but it pioneered disco. What has Musk pioneered? Not electric cars; Toyota got the ball rolling with the Prius, while Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard pioneered all-electric cars when they founded Tesla. When Musk bought into Tesla he drove the founders out and made the cars crash themselves and explode. He certainly didn’t pioneer spaceflight, which had been around since the ’60s. He’s just the vulture who swooped in after Reagan-era tax cuts finally gutted the NASA budget to the point it couldn’t feasibly make its own. Then NASA got so nervous about a weird man-child controlling American access to space it made the Artemis rocket anyway.

Second, KC and the Sunshine Band’s music is actually catchy! As the first comment to this Tumblr post explains, Musk’s other companies were successful despite him, with other employees having to make a bubble around him to make him feel powerful and special but not let him actually touch anything. A lot of people had suspicions, but his attempt at running Twitter, the first time he really has the ability to truly manage something without handlers insulating the company from him and him from consequences, is on the road to literally bankrupting him.

What I’m saying here is Elon Musk is a narcissist and a weirdo and not very good at anything. Some people are born on second base and think they hit a double, Musk was born on home plate and thinks he homered. That society has rewarded him for his nonsense and let him turn his apartheid money into the largest fortune in the world is an indictment of our society, and I hope he loses everything and ends up as a professional right-wing podcast guest whining about being canceled for being bad at his job.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.