News / coldplay
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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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1 min read
Two Years of We Pray and Nobody Answered
Read more . . . →Two years ago today, Coldplay released “We Pray.” It still sucks. They crammed Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyanna, and Tini onto one track and still managed to produce something with the emotional depth of a wellness app notification. Four artists who could each carry a stadium solo, reduced to garnish on a track focus-grouped into existence by a committee chasing the “unity” tag on Spotify. Chris Martin out here collecting features like they’re loyalty points. The single charted, obviously, because Coldplay at this point is less a band and more a purchasing habit. Then it disappeared, which is the kindest...
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1 min read
Parachutes turns 26 and it still sucks
Read more . . . →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...
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1 min read
Yellow turns 26 and it still sucks
Read more . . . →26 years ago today, Coldplay released “Yellow.” It still sucks. The whole song rides one metaphor a 15-year-old would’ve crossed out: you’re a star, I went yellow, the end. Chris Martin found four notes on a guitar, decided that was plenty, and pushed the falsetto until “earnest” started doing the job that “good” was supposed to do. Then the ad agencies got hold of it, and for the next decade you couldn’t watch a car drift down a coastal road or a phone spin on a white background without that mopey little riff leaking out of the speakers. It didn’t...
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1 min read
feelslikeimfallinginasleep: Two Years Later
Read more . . . →Two years ago today, Coldplay released “feelslikeimfallinginlove.” A song title with no spaces, like they tried to register a domain name and gave up halfway through. It still sucks. This was the lead single off Moon Music, the moment Chris Martin decided the band’s real problem was too many spaces in the track titles and not enough four-on-the-floor thump lifted off a 2014 festival main stage. It’s the sound of a man who heard dance music once, through a wall, and tried to rebuild it from memory. The title was honest about one thing, just not the verb they picked....
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1 min read
18 years of Viva la Vida, still wearing the costume
Read more . . . →18 years ago today, Coldplay released Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. It still sucks. This was supposed to be the brave one — the big reinvention. They put a Delacroix painting of an actual revolution on the cover, zipped themselves into surplus-store military jackets, and hired Brian Eno to scuff up the corners. Then they handed in the most focus-grouped record of the decade. You cannot cosplay as the barricades and write songs engineered to play under a phone commercial at the same time. The title track is a man who has never lost anything in...
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1 min read
X&Y turns 21 and it still sucks
Read more . . . →21 years ago today, Coldplay released X&Y. It still sucks. Thirteen tracks of a band straining to sound enormous and landing on damp. “Speed of Sound” is just “Clocks” with the batteries dying. “Fix You” is a motivational poster you can cry to at both weddings and funerals, depending on the open bar. The whole thing is so airless that Chris Martin spent the next decade telling interviewers it wasn’t very good — and when the guy who made the record is the one running cleanup on it, that’s not humility. That’s a confession. Here’s what you should listen to...
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