26 years ago today, Coldplay released “Trouble.” It still sucks.
Chris Martin wrote this because he felt guilty about being a jerk to his bandmates. That’s the whole origin story. A man who fronts one of the biggest bands on earth sat at a piano, played four pretty chords, and sang “a spider web is tangled up with me” like he’d just invented metaphor. The rest of us would just apologize and move on.
The piano riff is catchy for about twelve seconds. Then the song does absolutely nothing with it. It just sits there, gently trembling, like a golden retriever who knocked over a vase and wants you to know he’s very, very sorry. Peaked at number 10 in the UK, which means nine better songs existed that week and the British public still couldn’t help themselves. Martin sang “I never meant to cause you trouble” and then spent the next 26 years doing exactly that to every speaker system on the planet.
Here’s what you should listen to instead (all from 2000, all infinitely better):
- Daft Punk - One More Time - The only song from that year you actually need.
- Moby - Porcelain - Proof that electronic music can be emotional without making you want to lie facedown on a carpet.
- Fatboy Slim - Sunset (Bird of Prey) - Big beat with a fighter jet in the video. Everything Coldplay refused to be.
- Basement Jaxx - Bingo Bango - More energy in the first eight bars than Coldplay’s entire 2000 output.
- Timo Maas - Ubik - German techno that actually builds to something, unlike a certain piano riff that peaked in its own first measure.