Coldplay “Music of the Spheres”
Young love. When everything is full of promise. When anything seems possible and the best seems probable. When your heart is bursting and your head is spinning. When dewey body odor smells like sweet pheromones. When every morning is a rosey sunrise and every evening a smoldering sunset. Yes — we all remember young love. Even decades later, when we are different people, with different bodies, and when the details are a little hazy, we can still feel that feeling. There is nothing quite like the hold of young love. Case in point: Coldplay and the summer of 2000.
Back then, we could barely see it. In fact, we never even got introduced to the rest of the band. But there he was. Chris Martin. Just before sunrise. Twenty-three years young. Wet, matted hair. Unfixed teeth. Big mouth. Kind of big nose. Small, sensitive eyes. In his black, hooded poncho. Walking on the beach in a light rain. Just slightly awkward. With a voice that ached sincerity — the kind that sounds beautiful even when it strains. Especially when it strains. His song was a simple one. It didn’t take much to play. It was occasionally, adorably out of tune. But they were young. And he was enchanting. He was no Adonis. Not your typical matinee idol. And yet, everything about him and everything about that song was perfect. It was young love.
Coldplay’s timing was ideal. They were everything that the hegemony — namely Nu Metal — was not. They were gentle and sensitive and English. They were younger and prettier than the world’s two biggest Rock bands — U2 and Foo Fighters — and less horny and funky than the third — Dave Matthews Band. But most of all, they were heir apparents to Radiohead in the moment after “OK Computer” and right before “Kid A.” Where Radiohead had closed the door on “The Bends” and “Pablo Honey,” Coldplay gazed at those records adoringly. Whereas Radiohead explored the obscure, Coldplay cherished the accessible. Whereas Tom Yorke suffered from camera allergy, Chris Martin was an almost perfect subject, equal parts Britpop and Beckham.
Which is why, in the summer of 2000, when we all first heard “Yellow” — or rather when we first saw the one shot, Chris at dawn, on the beach video on MTV2, we fell in love. In a world full of “Bawitdaba” and “Nookie,” but where deep longing for “Creep” and “High and Dry” persisted, we begged the universe for an answer. And the universe responded with “Yellow.”
Obviously, it wasn’t just a matter of right time, right place. Over the next half decade, Coldplay produced “The Scientist,” “Clocks,” “Fix You” and a dozen slightly lesser, but still similar hits obsessed with matters of the heart and cosmos. There were many bands toiling in the crater left by Radiohead — Doves, Snow Patrol, Elbow, Keane, Muse and Travis to name but a few. But Coldplay were the most consistent and, more importantly, the least weird. They had the ultra-rare capacity to make songs ache and soar without any semblance of tension. Everything they did sounded pained and pain free. Depressed and delighted. In retrospect, this observation feels obvious and kind of facile. But it’s true nevertheless. And, moreover, it was an almost singular skill.
Along the way, they tried things. They worked with Brian Eno on “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” and followed that experiment with an intergalactic concept album called “Mylo Xyloto.” The results were slightly varied, but more so similar. Chris Martin could only sound like Chris Martin. And while the signifiers evolved, the signified of Coldplay hardened. They eclipsed U2 and Oasis as the most popular Rock band from the United Kingdom. Along the way, their lead singer married an A-list actress, catapulting them from Pop stardom into the celebrity stratosphere. Ten years after “Yellow,” Coldplay had fulfilled the promise of Radiohead’s “The Bends.” Most of the world adored them for it. But, it turned out that the promise was not mind blowing or earth shaking. It was simply, extremely fine.
And that became the thing about Coldplay. They were extremely fine. Their bug — their lack of friction — had become their undeniable feature. Even in divorce, Chris Martin managed to avoid friction, co-describing his split from Gwyneth not as a divorce or a break-up, but as a “conscious uncoupling.” However, where their consistency was once considered a strength, people began to whisper about their boring sameness. Corners of the internet wondered if maybe it should have been Snow Patrol or Travis and not Coldplay who carried Radiohead’s baton. If Coldplay were Britpop, they were posh Britpop. If they were Indie, they were Hallmark Indie. At the height of their ascent, Martin had quipped that Coldplay needed to focus on getting better, not bigger. By the second decade of the twentieth century, however, they were neither better nor bigger. They were more hovering blimp than soaring rocketship.
But they were a beloved blimp — or at least a mostly beloved one. Every monumentally popular Rock band gets their backlash. The internet is predictably littered with “Coldplay are boring,” “Coldplay sucks,” and “Coldplay are annoying” takes. Jon Pareles’ famous 2005 takedown for The New York Times, entitled “The Case Against Coldplay,” hit all the notes: Martin is a limited singer. His lyrics are banal. They’ve run out of ideas. They’re like Radiohead extra-extra-lite. They pretend to say important things when, in fact, they are saying nothing at all. It was a critique tailor made for snarky, meme-ready adoption. There were plenty of people cheering: “There — somebody finally said it! See?!” To my surprise, however, there was an equal — possibly greater — parade of support. For every “Coldplay sucks” thread, there are countless “In Defense of Coldplays.” For every Jon Pareles, there are dozens — hundreds probably — of rallying cries. The more I searched, the more I was surprised by the strident defenses. But, the more I considered the matter the more it made sense. For a generation of fans, Coldplay signified young love. And young love is really powerful.
If young love is powerful, time is — as they say — undefeated. And, in time, Coldplay began to fade. After “Mylo Xyloto,” critics noticeably soured on the band. Four star reviews became two and three stars. A minus and B pluses became B minus and C pluses. All those stars that shined on “Yellow” looked like flickering cliches fifteen years later. Years before, when they followed in Radiohead’s footsteps, both bands coexisted peacefully. When Coldplay’s acolytes arrived, however, the coexistence was more fraught. Ed Sheeran and Imagine Dragons offered newer and stranger, but still wildly popular, versions of Coldplay’s formula. And while Coldplay basically stayed the same, the universe threatened to pass them by. Which is why, for the first time in many years, Chris Martin wondered if maybe his band should try to get bigger rather than better. Whether they should they try to beat their competition rather than join them.
True to form, Coldplay tried both. Released in 2021, “Music of the Spheres” is a high concept album about extra terrestrial something or other, as well as a shameless Pop play featuring appearances by BTS and Selena Gomez, and oversight by Europ-Pop emperor, Max Martin. It’s a twelve song cycle with one ten minute epic and three sub-minute L. Ron Hubbard does Carl Sagan instrumentals. It’s an album that aims sky high but settles for layups and bricks. It is also — recency biases aside — the most critically reviled record in Coldplay’s oeuvre. Even diehard fans rank it a distant last. “Music of the Spheres” is the sound of a band imagining a through line between Bon Iver and K-Pop, but never finding it. And yet, like all Coldplay albums, it still sounds fine. Totally fine.
Well, mostly fine. For all of their accusations of “sameness,” Coldplay actually has two very different kinds of songs — those that work incredibly well and those that do not. On this album, there are zero can’t miss, never forget bullseyes. But there are a few that succeed — surprisingly well — on account of their strangeness. “Higher Power,” the album’s first single, is three glorious minutes of Pop, if “glorious” were to be defined as Franz Ferdinand engineered by Max Martin. It’s not your daddy’s (i.e. my) Coldplay. There are no audible guitars. The beats are shifty. It’s much more synth Pop than Rock and Roll. And it would not have won the Eurovision song award that year — Måneskin, from Italy, took home the title with “Zitti e buoni.” But it could have been a semi-finalist. It’s immaculately produced and understands the tingling grandeur of the band.
While there are no bonafide stunners on “Music of the Spheres,” there are a handful of stunning moments. “Human Heart” is pristine, post-modern Gospel. Paris Strother, Amber Strother and Jacob Collier join Martin for four part harmonies — the guests’ ethereal vibes pairing nicely with Martin’s earthly yearnings. “Let somebody Go” pushes the minimalism for maximum impact even further. Just a pulse of bass, spare guitar and a whisper of synth, its melody is faint but lovely. Martin does his thing, spinning glittering generalities into Tao. But it’s the deadpan of his partner, Selena Gomez, that really delivers. Her affect — flat but tuneful — is the opposite of Martins — soaring but pitchy. Together, their voices provide something that Coldplay struggles to locate on their own — tension.
And then there’s "Coloratura,” the epic, serpentine, ten minute closer. The outserspace synth jam features (synth) harp, (real) strings, intergalactic mumbo jumbo and New Age noodling wrapped around a melody that is — I dare to say — Beatles-esque. It’s sprawling and occasionally messy. It shouldn’t work. And yet, it does, landing somewhere between “Hey Jude” and Elton John’s “Funeral For a Friends / Love Lies Bleeding.” It’s their “Light Side of the Moon,” if you will.
Elsewhere, we get fair misses and nothing sandwiches. “Humankind” is mid-period U2 without the elite singer. Martin’s famous falsetto really strains here, sounding like a wounded animal. And later on in the song, when he tries to go low — too low — the limitations of his forty-four year old instrument are made clear. In middle-age, Chris Martin has neither low nor high. He has but mid and just above mid. “People of the Pride” is a Black Keys ripoff decrying fascism but lacking the fear and anxiety (or blues) required by its form and function. "Biutyful,” meanwhile, is as meaningless as its awful title. It’s low end filler dressed up with a silly new name.
And then, of course, there’s “My Universe,” the album’s lone chart topper and the most streamed song on the album by a wide margin. Its success, of course, having much more to do with Coldplay’s special guests — BTS — than with the band’s popularity or the song’s ostensible virtues. It is almost exactly what you’d expect — fuzzy Euro-synth, a tight hook and a gigantic beat that overwhelms Martin but which succeeds as a playground for BTS and tweenage thrills.
At least, in theory. Since K-pop is not exactly my domain, I could neither evaluate the song nor confirm its purported merits. But because I am also the father of a twelve year old daughter slash J-pop aficionado (daughter’s note: Stray Kids > BTS) I had free-lance expertise at my disposal. In my defense, I tried. I really did. I listened to “My Universe” a bunch and considered it in the context of the rest of the album, as well as in comparison to the K-pop hits of 2021. Ultimately, I rated it a 6.5 on a one to ten linear scale — enjoyable but not overly so, catchy but not undeniable, and docked a point for the insipid lyrics. To my credit — at least according to my daughter — I was not so far off. Her review, delivered via text message, read:
“I find the song very like 2020 which makes sense because it came out in 2021. It has a very like NSYNC feel. But BTS didn’t match Coldplay’s vibe and vice versa. Whenever the song got to Korean it kinda got softer (idk if that’s what they were going for but yeah). But it has a really hype and celebratory vibe and a catchy chorus and rhythm. Like a song they would play at like a dance party. Also the line distribution was not even. For a collab I think that bts should have their own big part in the middle or the distribution should be 50/50. I found the song enjoyable while I was listening to it but after I found it forgettable. Sooooooo…… yeah.” 7/10.
She’s right, of course. They are enjoyable. And they are forgettable. And while they might try to shake those immutable facts with a dash more Bon Iver, a cup more Imagine Dragons, a full serving of Max Martin, and a silly astrological concept, they are exactly who they have always been. Which is why, try as we might, protest as we do, we cannot refuse them. Nearly a quarter century later, they are still our young loves.