It’s no false modesty to say I’m not very good at writing about music and therefore usually leave the job to my friend Matt (who, btw, has just been nominated for Press Gazette’s student feature writer of the year, yay!)
Anyway I’m not going to try to describe why I love the new Coldplay album, though I’m still in that play-it-incessantly stage of audio bliss where I can’t quite bear to leave the house without my i-pod. My favourite track on the record is Violet Hill; second is Lost! with its church organ, syncopated beats and hand-claps though that will inevitably change once I’ve listened to it one billion times. Also enjoyable is the odd, sunny, Hawaii-tinged Strawberry Swing.
I’ve gone through the same stage of addiction with all Coldplay’s albums, so that they’re now inseparable from my memories of certain key events in my life. Parachutes is A-levels and swapping jumpers with my first love in July and August 2000; A Rush of Blood to the Head was the soundtrack to long, hot bus rides in Cuba in September 2002; X & Y was unemployment and floundering graduate angst in summer 2005.
I know it makes me deeply uncool to confess that Coldplay are one of my all-time favourite bands, but I don’t really care. I’ve never had any time for music snobbery. Life’s too short to not be allowed to enjoy something just because you do. My dad says Coldplay sound too samey; that there’s nothing new in their music and that’s why they suck. He might be right. Funnily enough I’m also inclined to agree with Ann Powers in the LA Times, who compares their resonance to picking up “a self-help book from the display table in a big-box bookstore… [and finding] a phrase that exactly applied to your life”.
Johnny Rotten might not like the new album but the NME is unexpectedly complimentary: “they are fantastic at what they do, ie sneaking alternative culture into the nation’s subconscious while pretending to be dinner party music. And ‘Viva La Vida…’, like the much-maligned (by the band anyway) ‘X&Y’, is a brilliant collection of songs”.
Maybe it isn’t so much that liking Coldplay is uncool, but more that hating them is supposed to be cool…
Here’s another surprisingly good review: http://www.slate.com/id/2193566
It’s funny (and kinda proves your point), Strawberry Swing and Lost! are actually probably my least favorite songs on the album, I think I prefer Viva la Vida, Death and all his friends and Life in Technicolor, which sounds uncharacteristically and unashamedly light and happy…
But I’m sure my preferences will change too!
Actually, I might also “prefer” the first half of Lovers in Japan…
i think only idiots hate coldplay. For what they do, which is to all intents and purposes family friendly MOR, they do a damn sight better and with more genuine-if-rather-vague feeling than any other band I can think of. Ok, so it’s nothing new, and they do have a habit of unsubtly co-opting another band’s style for each album (radiohead/u2/arcade fire), but so what – not much is. And I also like Chris Martin, I think he beats himself up more than any journalist could and doesn’t need or deserve me jumping in too.
and oh yes, thanks for the kind words. You get a mention in the victory/furious loser speech now :P
this album is pretty good actually… far better than the last one…
what do you think about this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUhFLiw6h6s
If the Rolling Stones took every penny from Bittersweet Symphony then Chris Martin will be living on the streets when this gets through the courts.
nah, one of these type of things comes up everytime a big band releases a new album, and the little guys never win…haven’t they said that there’s a coldplay demo of that track from 7 months before the live footage of that other band? And apart from the first section of the first line, there’s not that much similarity anyway.
the worst case like this is the robbie williams angels one…
[...] 17, 2008 by estherbintliff So, much as I like the Coldplay album, especially played loud when driving long stretches of empty roads in the west of Scotland, I [...]