January
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News / anniversary
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1 min read
11 Years of Adventure of a Lifetime: Still Sucks
Read more . . . →11 years ago today, Coldplay released “Adventure of a Lifetime.” It still sucks. The music video is the four of them in motion-capture suits, rendered as CGI monkeys dancing in a jungle. Nobody in the room stopped this from happening. And honestly, it’s the most accurate visual representation of the band’s creative process to date: primates pressing buttons and hoping something sticks. The song itself is a disco-funk guitar riff that sounds like it was pulled from a Maroon 5 reject pile, Chris Martin singing “turn your magic on” over it like a man reading a fortune cookie aloud at...
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1 min read
Nobody Said It Was Easy (Listening to The Scientist for 24 Years Certainly Isn't)
Read more . . . →24 years ago today, Coldplay released “The Scientist.” It still sucks. Chris Martin sat at a piano, sang “nobody said it was easy” in that whimper he mistakes for emotion, and an entire generation of guys who own one acoustic guitar decided this was the pinnacle of songwriting. The lyrics are built from fridge magnets. “Questions of science, science and progress, do not speak as loud as my heart.” My man rhymed science with science. The backwards music video was a neat trick, but you can’t watch a video backwards enough times to make “tell me you love me, come...
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1 min read
15 Years of Mylo Xyloto: Still Sucks
Read more . . . →15 years ago today, Coldplay released Mylo Xyloto. It still sucks. The title sounds like what happens when you pass out on your keyboard, which is appropriate because that’s exactly what the music does to people. This was the record where Chris Martin decided stadium pop needed a Rihanna feature and a concept album about a dystopian love story. Nobody asked for either, and everyone got both. They turned “Paradise” into a ringtone that colonized every shopping mall on earth for two straight years. The whole thing reads like George Orwell filtered through a Hallmark card and set to the...
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1 min read
26 Years of Trouble (the Coldplay Kind)
Read more . . . →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...
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1 min read
Five Years of Music of the Spheres and It Still Sucks
Read more . . . →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...
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1 min read
Moon Music Turns Two. Recycled in Every Sense.
Read more . . . →Two years ago today, Coldplay released Moon Music. It still sucks. The album was physically pressed on recycled plastic, which turned out to be the most honest creative decision on the entire project. Chris Martin spent the promo tour talking about sustainability while delivering ten songs so disposable they belong in the bin the plastic came from. “We Pray” featured four guest vocalists and still managed to sound like an airport departures lounge. The lead single was spelled as one long word because apparently spaces are too edgy for a band that hasn’t taken a risk since 2008. Caribou’s album...
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1 min read
My Universe Turns Five. BTS Deserved Better.
Read more . . . →Five years ago today, Coldplay released “My Universe” with BTS. It still sucks. Coldplay looked at their declining chart position, looked at the biggest pop act on the planet, and decided to hitch a ride. The result hit number one on the Hot 100 and not one person could hum the chorus a week later. “You are my universe.” That’s the hook. The entire hook. Eleven men across two continents on a Zoom call decided that was the lyric worth building a single around. A fridge magnet poetry kit does better work with the vowels removed. BTS carried this so...
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1 min read
Fifteen Years of Para-Para-Paradise
Read more . . . →Fifteen years ago today, Coldplay released “Paradise.” It still sucks. The one where Chris Martin sings “para-para-paradise” on a loop like a GPS stuck recalculating. It was the second single off Mylo Xyloto, an album title that sounds like a prescription sedative and does roughly the same for the listener. The video featured a man in an elephant costume escaping a zoo and turning up at a concert in South Africa. That’s not a metaphor I’m reading into it. That is the literal plot. Fifty million YouTube views and counting, because apparently the bar was in hell and Coldplay brought...
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1 min read
Fix You Turns 21. Still Broken.
Read more . . . →21 years ago today, Coldplay released “Fix You.” It still sucks. Chris Martin wrote a ballad so emotionally manipulative it’s been played at sports montages, charity galas, and every reality TV elimination since 2007. The organ intro is a push notification for tears. You don’t feel anything when “Fix You” plays. Your nervous system is being mugged by a chord progression that has been A/B tested by every TV producer on the planet. The song isn’t even sad. It’s a man who married Gwyneth Paltrow singing “lights will guide you home” like he’s writing fortune cookies for airport bookshops. Grey’s...
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1 min read
A Rush of Blood to the Head Turns 24. Still No Pulse.
Read more . . . →Twenty-four years ago today, Coldplay released A Rush of Blood to the Head. It still sucks. This was Peak Coldplay, which is like being the tallest building in Winnipeg. You can see it from far away but nobody flew there on purpose. The album gave us “The Scientist” and “Clocks,” two songs that have been emotionally weaponized by every university orientation video and Grey’s Anatomy death montage since 2002. Chris Martin played piano like he was apologizing for something he hadn’t done yet, and twenty-four years later I still don’t know what it was. The whole record sounds like a...
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