26 years ago today, Coldplay released their debut album Parachutes. It still sucks.
This is the record people reach for when they want to argue the band was good “before they sold out,” which is the whole con — Parachutes wasn’t a promising start that curdled later, it was the finished blueprint for two decades of beige. Chris Martin already had the formula bolted down: strum four chords, aim the falsetto at the cheap seats, and mistake sounding sad for having something to say. “Yellow” bought the beach house and “Trouble” still leaks out of every coffee shop, but the album’s actual legacy was teaching a generation of bands that if you sound earnest enough, nobody clocks that you never wrote a hook. They spent the next 26 years proving it, one stadium at a time.
The real crime is the company it kept. 2000 was one of the best years dance music ever had — French house was cresting and the clubs were having more fun than any man whining into a four-track ever would — and a nation of teenagers put this mopey thing on instead and called it depth. Depth was on the next shelf over, and unlike Chris Martin, it could dance.
Here’s what you should listen to instead. All 2000. All better: