For a while I was on a kick of listening to The Mountain Goats’ “You Were Cool,” and I couldn’t tell if I was feeling bummed out because I was listening to it a lot, or if listening to it a lot was making me feel bummed out. It’s a chicken-and-egg kind of thing, but John Darnielle’s postcard to a former classmate who was bullied is affecting regardless. It’s the kind of song that tends to give me pause, and only after a minute or so has passed do I realize I’ve been staring off into space, looking at nothing.
As Pitchfork wrote back in 2010 when Mountain Goats main man John Darnielle tweeted a video of it, “If you’re the type who gets emotional about Mountain Goats songs, you will get emotional about this one.” I wouldn’t have counted myself among that demographic, but that speaks to the power of the song. It’s just Darnielle, his acoustic guitar, and “the same four chords I use most of the time when I’ve got something on my mind, and I don’t want to squander the moment trying to come up with a more complicated riff to say what I want to say.”