The pop cultural rules of musical taste are as follows:
- If you unironically play “Wonderwall” by Oasis on guitar at a party, you deserve no respect.
- Nickelback may not actually be that bad, but you’re never allowed to say that. Ever.
- Hating Coldplay is the easiest way to display your dominance in a room.
With regard to number 3, this rule is understandable. I poked fun at my friends who went through a Fall Out Boy phase (for which I apologize; everyone deserves their emo phase), and to be totally honest, Coldplay is the ultimate emo band. They dress casually enough to blend in with any suburban family but wail melodramatic lyrics like “I’m dead on the surface, but I’m screaming underneath” (and that was before everyone hated them). They’re the musical embodiment of smiling through the pain. Us fans deserve your scrutiny for our perpetual whiny sorrows.
Once they struck massive success with single “Viva La Vida” (which just admit it, you like, too), it was over. Coldplay became a band for the weepy. But repeat after me: I am weepy, and I am proud! Pop music that packs an emotional punch is necessary for the soul sometimes. Or maybe I’m just a fangirl.
Allow me to set the scene: Miami, 2012.
Coldplay was touring their album Mylo Xyloto, a colorful record that marked the end of an era for the more traditional Coldplay sound. They didn’t sell the front row seats of the arena so that they could randomly promote fans to upgrade (giving their old seats to volunteers). It was what many described as the most awesome night of their lives. I know because I was one of those fans.
For my first ever concert at 14, seeing one of the biggest bands in the world from the front row was an experience that forever ruined concertgoing for me—what show could possibly compete?
It secured my love for Coldplay as the leaders of a community, always respecting and admiring their fans and performing audience-driven shows. But I was devoted to Coldplay long before that, and several hit-and-miss albums later, am still in the game.
TBH, Coldplay critics may be right. At their most innovative, Coldplay released a debut album with melodic dexterity and an understated presence. They were cool. We must also acknowledge the storytelling behind concept album Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends. That was visionary thinking. But even Coldplay admits to X&Y’s disjointedness, and as a die-hard fan, I’ll agree that many of their feel-good hits are cheesy, to say the least.
Coldplay aren’t musical geniuses.
They’ll never reshape popular music like The Beatles or be masters of genre-melding like Queen. They’re not rock icons like Eagles or iconic in image like Kiss. But they put on a fun show and make music that large groups of people all across the globe find meaning in. We can’t overlook that.
The band knows what they’re good at—catchy, lyrical-driven alt-rock—and never totally breaks from the conventions of a genre. They do, however, travel from genre to genre. Exploration requires risk-taking, a tactic as impressive to me as innovation. If you want moody acoustic music, check out Parachutes. For cinematic soundscapes, go to Viva La Vida or Death and All of His Friends. Alternative rock encompasses a vast landscape of styles, and few bands show the agility that Coldplay does to manoeuvre from one to the next. Just because each album maintains the recognizable Coldplay sound doesn’t mean they’re not inventive (listen to “Sparks” vs. “Up and Up.” Nothing alike.) They play to their strengths.
Arguably, the greatest strength Coldplay has is Chris Martin’s energy.
If you’ve seen their documentary, A Head Full of Dreams, you know what I’m talking about. His prophetic visions about the band when they were just in college gave me chills, and the rest of the guys admit that he’s the force behind their adventures, what’s gotten them this far for so long.
Chris’s energy takes center stage, be it through jumping up and down while somehow staying right on pitch or thrusting himself towards the piano in sync to Will Champion’s beat. Chris Martin’s performance is an uncontrollable explosion. But an area overlooked, my favorite strength of Coldplay, is his vocal control.
Gifted with a stunningly wide vocal range, tracks like “Moving to Mars” show off a lower range so deep and reverberant it’s almost unintelligible—as if Earth is shaking through your headphones—while tracks like “Up in Flames” spotlight a softer higher register. Most impressive is Martin’s ability to shift between the two seamlessly.
Leaving A Head Full of Dreams aside, most every Coldplay album plays to this strength. Effects are rarely placed over his voice, letting the imperfections and shakiness of his transitions come forth. This vulnerability makes Coldplay music accessible and I think is one of the subconscious reasons so many people like them. His voice is unpolished (let’s overlook Ghost Stories and AHFOD again) like an actual human’s. Never does he completely butcher a note or mess up his technique, but he lets us hear his struggle to belt extensively and the slight inconsistencies in his lower vibrato.
But Coldplay has never been concerned with perfection;
cut to my all-time favorite song, “The Scientist.” As a kid, I tried to play this song on piano for years and always wondered why it never sounded quite like Chris Martin, figuring that it must be the sad truth that I am, in fact, not Chris Martin.
But no. Chris wrote the song on an out of tune piano, recorded it, and that’s the version that appears on the track. The band chose to stick with an authentic and imperfect piano instead of re-recording in tune. The difference is slight, but it makes the song sound like it’s playing for you in real time. Think about how the song’s main lyric is “take me back to the start,” accompanied by a piano de-tuned from the passage of time.
Thematic and subtle, you can find plenty of little quirks and zingers in Coldplay’s earlier work. As for their later stuff? It’s reflective of where the bandmates are as people. Ghost Stories was a shockingly raw look into Chris Martin’s public divorce (its heavily electronic sound may have been distracting, but it served as a literal distraction for the band going through a rough time). A Head Full f Dreams let us know that he’s okay. For a band that keeps its social media presence slight, the music tells us more about their lives than anything else. They never hold back.
Chris has the benefit of one of the tightest ensembles in pop music playing with him.
Johnny Buckland can play a poppy riff that gets stuck in your head for days (“Strawberry Swing”). Guy Berryman ground the group with his attention to detail and attitude on bass. You have to see Will Champion play drums and church bells live on “Viva La Vida.” The four bandmates met in college and to this day still have the energy of a couple of kids who like playing together.
Pure and vivid, their brotherhood makes fans wish they could be part of the band and protects them from critics who want nothing more than to see them torn apart.
