News / coldplay
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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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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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1 min read
In My Place turns 24. It still sucks.
Read more . . . →24 years ago today, Coldplay released “In My Place.” It still sucks. One circular guitar line that goes nowhere, a drum part that just keeps time, and Chris Martin doing his wounded falsetto about being lost and singing lines he couldn’t change. He repeats “in my place” until you start to wonder if he forgot where he was standing. It’s three minutes of a man being mildly sad in a very expensive studio, engineered to sell you a sedan during a commercial break — which is roughly where the song lives now. 2002 was a great year for music that...
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1 min read
Viva la Vida turns 18 and it still sucks
Read more . . . →18 years ago today, Coldplay released “Viva la Vida.” It still sucks. The Wikipedia-history crowd absolutely ate this one up. Chris Martin whispered vaguely about kings and castles over a string section he definitely didn’t write, and the entire planet decided it was profound. It’s not. It’s a pub quiz answer dressed as an anthem — three minutes of someone else’s history lesson, and the world called it the song of the year. The Grammys agreed. The Grammys are also frequently wrong. It took Brian Eno to make Coldplay sound this expensive, and they still ended up in court over...
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1 min read
Speed of Sound turns 21. It still sucks.
Read more . . . →21 years ago today, Coldplay released “Speed of Sound.” It still sucks. It’s Clocks. Same piano arpeggio, same key, same Chris Martin emoting at you with his whole face like he’s about to say something important and then doesn’t. They had one formula, got scared to leave it, and repackaged it. The marketing team worked harder than the songwriters on this one. Here’s what you should have been listening to in 2005: Chemical Brothers – Galvanize — Q-Tip rapping over a drum machine in a song that actually has forward motion Pendulum – Tarantula — DnB that makes your chest...
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1 min read
Ghost Stories turns 12. It still sucks.
Read more . . . →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...
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Higher Power Turns Five (The Skip Button Is Still Working)
Read more . . . →5 years ago today, Coldplay released “Higher Power.” The only higher power involved was the skip button. It’s a song about reaching for god, or love, or the cosmos — pick one — but what it actually sounds like is a SoulCycle instructor’s Spotify playlist. Chris Martin squeezed into auto-tune like a man trying to prove he can still fit into his high school jeans. The lyrics are what you’d get if you asked a fortune cookie to write stadium rock and then dipped it in Bono. Here’s what you should listen to instead — what 2021 actually sounded like:...
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1 min read
A Sky Full of Stars turns 12 and it still sucks
Read more . . . →12 years ago today, Coldplay released “A Sky Full of Stars.” It still sucks. They got Avicii to produce it — the guy had just turned “Wake Me Up” into one of the biggest records in years — and somehow ended up with a drop that lands like wet cardboard. Chris Martin going “oh-oh-oh-woh” over a chord progression that sounds like it was assembled from a Dropbox folder called epic_festival_moment_FINAL_v2.wav. Avicii’s ghost is out there right now, staring at the ceiling of whatever afterlife he ended up in, wondering how it went so wrong. Here’s what you should listen to...
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Violet Hill turns 18 and it still can't pull off being angry
Read more . . . →18 years ago today, Coldplay released “Violet Hill.” It still sucks. The idea was a war protest song — guitar distortion, Chris Martin attempting something like a growl. What they delivered sounds like someone who found out they were double-charged at Starbucks. Pouty and vaguely betrayed. The Iraq War was still going and Coldplay’s big political statement involved mumbling about priests with poison while being exactly as threatening as a passive-aggressive Post-it note. 2008 was a great year for music. Here’s what you should have been listening to while Coldplay was practicing their frowns: Deadmau5 ft. Rob Swire - Ghosts...
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