12 years ago today, Coldplay released Ghost Stories. It still sucks.
Chris Martin processed his divorce from Gwyneth Paltrow by making the most expensive sad playlist of all time — eleven tracks of bedroom heartbreak produced to arena scale. The album went number one in 30 countries. That’s not a vindication, that’s a diagnosis. Gwyneth got the better deal.
Here’s what you should have been listening to in 2014:
- Aphex Twin – minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix] — Richard D. James came back from 13 years of silence and immediately made everyone else irrelevant
- Caribou – Can’t Do Without You — four minutes of actual emotional texture, does the thing Ghost Stories aimed for
- SBTRKT ft. Ezra Koenig – New Dorp New York — danceable grief, which is more interesting than polished grief
- Jungle – Busy Earnin’ — two anonymous Brits made something more soulful than Coldplay’s entire discography
- FKA Twigs – Two Weeks — weird, alien, uncomfortable in all the ways Coldplay refused to be