My Introduction to Coldplay

Rewind to Spring Break 2003 with my family, the first time I heard Coldplay. I was only about 7 years old. At the time, “Clocks” was the radio single and my dad was desperate to find out who the artist of the song was. We went to the local mall in Orange Beach, Alabama; here, they had a CD shop, a rare commodity these days. I remember considering “Clocks” a pretty boring track, and to this day I consider it a pretty mellow song. After my dad found out the culprit responsible for writing such a boring song was Coldplay, he bought every album to date, which was the duology of their first album Parachutes (an even sleepier affair) and A Rush of Blood to the Head (from which “Clocks” is a single). My dad would subsequently play them in the car the whole trip. Coldplay was what I considered “dad rock”.

Flash forward to 2005. Coldplay’s X&Y released and, to my displeasure, my dad had a CD copy in his car ready to go on the release day. A few months later, I would be informed that we were going to a Coldplay concert as a family. I was not excited. It sounded more like a good nap time session, and funnily enough, I would wind up falling asleep for more than half the concert on a blanket in the back lawn of the venue. My parents loved the show. I don’t even remember it. Today, I regret that.

Viva La Vida rolls around in 2008 and suddenly my dad stops listening to Coldplay. He and others that I knew enjoyed the band claimed they had gone “too poppy”, trading in their traditional sound for a more radio-friendly sound. Interestingly, today, rock bands stray far more drastically from rock than Coldplay did on this record and still are considered rock. Anyway, the album, initially, did not interest me at all because I didn’t care what Coldplay had to say no matter how sonically different the record supposedly was.

However, 7th grade was the beginning of a transformative time for me. I started to learn about who I was and what I liked, as everybody does at that age, and I started to figure out what music meant to me.

At age 12, I turned off the radio, turned on the computer and started to find new tracks online. Of course, this was before the dawn of music streaming services such as Spotify, so you really had to dig for new songs. There wasn’t a custom made for you playlist that was updated every week by robots. I, alone, was responsible for the sound that entered my earholes. Looking back, sometimes I made some horrendously irresponsible choices and listened to some pretty terrible music. I didn’t know any better, I was just a kid listening to what I could find, forcing myself away from the popularity of the songs on the radio. That is until I stumbled upon the song “Strawberry Swing” via a Coldplay app on the Apple App Store while browsing on my now-dated iPod Touch.

At the time, apps were a pretty new and exciting thing. Kids and adults alike were waving their founds around, looking quite ridiculous using the new motion sensing technology. This tech is rarely even talked about in iPhone games today. Coldplay cashed in on a trend. The app had a mini game where you played as the character from the visually incredible music video. The app also feature the music video itself, which I watched and walked away from quite confused. The track was happy, nearly flamboyant, and much more upbeat than the sleepy Coldplay tracks of yore. At the time, I listened to some pretty hard rock, nearly metal, so this track, albeit interesting, was too colorful for me.

A Track by Track Overview

A few months later I saw my dad’s CD copy of Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends sitting atop our stereo speaker, idle at home. At this point, all I knew of the record was that there were two singles: the undoubtedly pop titular track “Viva La Vida” and the intriguing track from the iPhone app “Strawberry Swing”. While I was home alone one day, I decided to halfheartedly put the disc in and hit play. I was surprised. I was taken aback. The opening track was beautiful. A soft synth came in and gradually got louder to a point where beautiful production of sounds and instruments, inspirations from all around the world gathered together to make a loud, punchy, pop-rock track. It was powerful, made a statement, and it didn’t even need any lyrics to do so. “Life in Technicolor” forced me to sit down and buckle up for the rest of the record.

The next track, “Cemeteries of London”, was a dark and foreboding, yet adventurous song. “Lost!” incorporated the old Coldplay sounds of organs, which I once considered boring, but here they were, blown up in scale with a tribal bongo beat and clap. 42 is probably as conceptual as Coldplay has ever been: a track split in half by two separate, contrasting sounds. the track is melancholy piano ballad bridged with a breakout, guitar heavy second half. The guitar sounded happy, almost glad the first part of the song was over. The intentional contrast was evident and made audible.

“Lovers In Japan / Reign of Love”, another 2 part track, was Coldplay at their most sentimental and has become one of my favorites. Speaking of “lovers”, “soldiers”, and “runners”, telling them all to keep strong on their mission in life, whatever it be. All of this was surrounded by nostalgic guitar shimmers and a honkey tonk piano played playfully by frontman Chris Martin. The first act of the track ended with the hopeful line “I have no doubt, one day the sun will come out”. The second half of the track was a sleepy piano ballad soaked in synth, but after the first, explosively joyful half, it was a welcome change of pace.

“Yes” was a strange track and, to this day, doesn’t really fit tonally with any other Coldplay tracks. It’s sexual, speaks of temptations, and parents not being home. The track is acoustic heavy, surrounded with global influences in its percussion and heavy orchestral pieces throughout the track.

“Viva La Vida”, the titular track, was a beautifully produced orchestral piece featuring frontman Chris Martin’s vocals and piano. That’s undeniable. I initially questioned the lack of their traditional band instruments, but the production is so gorgeous and other-worldly, it was easy to forget. The lyrics spoke of various pieces of history, but they all relate to the fall of a king. Somebody who was on top, but fell. As a single, it made a great radio-friendly track.

The next track, “Violet Hill” was as rock of a rock song as Coldplay has ever made, guitar heavy and angsty. It’s a marching song. If you were to begin a revolution, this song would soundtrack it as you threw Molotov cocktails into shop windows.

“Strawberry Swing”, the penultimate track, was and is the most beautiful piece of music the band has ever made. It blends orchestral sounds, a happy guitar riff, and rumbling drums into a dreamscape. If you haven’t seen the music video, I linked it above. It’s a perfect visual interpretation of the track. “It’s such a perfect day, it’s such a perfect day” Martin repeatedly exclaims. He speaks of a “strawberry swing” and not wanting to change anything about his perfect day. It’s all very beautiful and nonsensical, much like a dream. Here, it occurred to me that Coldplay had swapped sleepy sounds for dreamy sounds on this record and used the album as a canvas to portray different soundscapes for listeners to explore.

The final, second titular track “Death and All His Friends” begins as a heartfelt, innocent piano ballad, begging a love to come over and be patient. The song builds with some guitar and drums and picks up into a choir full of the band and the album’s producers shouting “I don’t want a cycle of recycled revenge, I don’t want to follow death and all of his friends!”. It’s all very powerful stuff and an epic, melancholy conclusion to the album that leaves you hungry for more, yet is concluding and satisfying. The end of the track is the synth from the beginning of the first track “Life in Technicolor”, making the album appropriately cyclic. Martin chants “and, in the end, we lie awake, and dream of making our escape” and hums into the swirl of synths and into the silence, reiterating that dreamscape quite verbally. Then, the album begins again.

Shortly after my first listen, I would leave for my first European trip with my mother and sister, and the album would soundtrack the duration. Appropriate, given the global influences on the record.

Is It Still 2008?

Today, it doesn’t feel like Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends has aged a day. Of course this may be attributed to its release during an exciting time in my life; a boy growing up and going to Europe to see the world. However, it’s not just my life experiences that I associated with the record that keeps it from aging.

I would argue that some of their more recent albums have aged more so than this record. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the album would perform critically even better today than it did 9 years ago. Today, artists get away with far more manufactured sounds than critics allowed Coldplay in 2008. Due to the rarity of traditional sounds in pop music, listeners are looking for something more organic. The radio today is obsessed with EDM inspirations and even Coldplay’s own collaboration with The Chainsmokers falls prey to this trend. Viva bridges and balances in the gap between rock and pop by taking inspiration from sounds around the globe, and does so while creating a convincing, gorgeous piece of production work and a cohesive album. That is much more than most #1 albums can say today.