Five years ago today, Coldplay released Music of the Spheres. It still sucks.
They literally named tracks with emoji. Not ironically. Someone in a boardroom approved this. “Higher Power” sounds like it was focus-grouped in an airport lounge, and “My Universe,” the BTS collab, was the most transparent grab for a younger audience since a Fortune 500 company hired a meme intern. Chris Martin sang “you are my universe” over a Max Martin beat and the entire internet pretended this was a cultural event. Salon called the album “an unholy mess.” They were being kind.
The whole record is a band desperately cosplaying as interesting. Twelve tracks, emojis for titles, a space theme that runs out of steam by track two, and at the center of it all: the same four chords they’ve been recycling since 2005 with slightly more expensive production. Five years later, nobody is revisiting this album. Nobody ever was.
Here’s what you should listen to instead (all from 2021, the year this landed):
- Bicep - Apricots (from Isles)
- Fred again.. - Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing)
- Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & London Symphony Orchestra - Promises
- Dom Dolla - Pump the Brakes
- Danny L Harle - On a Mountain (from Harlecore)