The Ramones and The New York Dolls immediately jumped to mind, I then opened the thread and saw the opening gambit of Blondie. Must have been something in the NYC water back in the 70s.
The Beatles - no contest
Bloody great big contest, more like.
As the years went by, it became a National Occasion every time the Beatles released a record, a film or appeared in a concert, in the UK or abroad. Youngsters today probably will never understand just how exciting it was to live through those times and wonder what they would come up with next. Almost every band since The Beatles was influenced by them to any degree. In whatever they did, they were the first to do it, and that was what was so exciting.
That's all very nice but it's not exactly cool. There were lots of contemporaries far cooler (albeit a lot less influential) and they released Ob-la-di Ob-la-da and that is an abhomination in any language. Octopus's Garden? For the benefit of Mr Kite? Nope. Just those records alone would disqualify them.
The answer IS Interpol. I shan't return to this thread, I'll just assume everyone's agreed with me. Theyre so far ahead of anyone else.
Ob-la-di was an album track, not a single, though it was released as a single by Marmalade. Octopus's Garden was also an album track, a rare Beatle song written by Ringo. For The Benefit of Mr Kite was also an album track, but have you ever studied the words? They are straight off a circus poster, which was John saying that absolutely any words could be made into a song. A rarity in those love-song days. These, and other, even worse examples, just illustrate the variety of musical genres The Beatles could write and perform. They were never in a genre rut.
None of that means that these crap tunes should be excluded from assessing whether the Beatles were cool or not, does it?