Mylo Xyloto - 16 months on

[kickinit4real22]

In this thread:

"Waaaaaaahhh! Someone dislikes a bad album! Waaaaaaahhh!"

 

I don't think I've listened to the album in 15 months, honestly.

 

did you really give it a chance or was it Hate at first listen, because as much as I hate X & Y, I gave it chance

[smallnshort247]

I wasn't the biggest fan of MX when it came out, but it slowly grew on me. But then I ended up seeing them live 3 times during the MX tour, and it was AMAZING! I've been to concerts in the X&Y and VLV era too, and this was by far my favorite era to see them live in out of the 3. To be honest, I'm not sure how they're gonna surpass the live performance they were able to put out for MX. Anywho, Parachutes is still my favorite album since that's the one that introduced me to Coldplay. AROBTTH is a very close second :)

[Corkus]

did you really give it a chance or was it Hate at first listen, because as much as I hate X & Y, I gave it chance

Both. And to this day, "Us Against the World" is the only song I can listen to the whole way through without wanting to strangle a cat, punch it, tie it to a toaster, and throw it out the window as hard as I can.

[Comrade Mike]

There's an advert on TV where Rihanna says Capital FM is the middleman between her and her fans. Whenever I hear that, I think to myself "Isn't that a bad thing? Wouldn't it be better for her to cut out the middleman and interact directly with her fans?" Back at the start of June 2011, Coldplay were off to a good start with Mylo Xyloto. After cryptically teasing it at the end of May, they released a brand new song as a digital single, Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall. This coincided with them playing at an assortment of festivals, previewing ETIaW as well as other new songs. It was during the run-up to their appearance at Glastonbury that they then announced they would be re-releasing ETIaW. Making their fans buy the same thing twice is shady enough, but at least they planned on making it up by also releasing it on CD and vinyl with a new song (Major Minus), right? Wrong. Coldplay decided a third song, Moving to Mars, would only be available specifically on iTunes. This was the first of several intentional missteps.

 

Who benefits from this arrangement? Certainly not the people who buy ETIaW on CD, vinyl or generally anywhere other than iTunes. They get the privilege of paying for an incomplete product. Not the people who buy it from iTunes, for whom buying MtM is no different to buying any other Coldplay song, except that they have no other option than to buy it from iTunes. Probably not Coldplay themselves, who locked out a portion of their fanbase for nothing at best or extra money at worst. Only Apple benefits from this, reaping 100% of the sales of MtM instead of just the 70% they'd get if it were available elsewhere. Having already bought ETIaW when it first came out and having no intention of ever buying anything from iTunes, I didn't bother with MtM or even MM. I opted instead to see if maybe a promo CD with all 3 tracks on it would appear. It didn't. Then I waited to see if MtM would make it to the MX tracklist. It didn't, nor did it appear as a B-side to the Paradise single. Finally, I waited to see if it would be on the Japanese release of MX. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't. It was mid-September by this point, almost 3 months since ETIaW had been re-released, and it had become readily apparent to me that Coldplay had no intention of correcting their fuck-up. All the excitement I'd felt from watching YouTube videos of their festival appearances had vanished by this point, replaced with disappointment and a sense of "Why bother?". With no intention of supporting a band who were willing to screw over both their fans and the current state of music downloads, I made the conscious decision to not only avoid MX, but to also stop listening to any other music of theirs.

 

I'm glad I did, because MX has been an unmitigated disaster for fans. Gone were the glory days of 2008-09, when Coldplay tried to be as inclusive as possible with the availability of their music. Viva la Vida Coldplay streamed their album on MySpace a week before its release, whereas MX Coldplay made Spotify users wait an extra 100 days before letting them listen to the album. Viva Coldplay knew that making promo CDs and a video for Lovers in Japan doesn't constitute releasing a single without making a separate release for people to buy, whereas MX Coldplay want to claim that they released Charlie Brown as a single. Viva Coldplay gave away a live album for free from their website and at concerts. MX Coldplay? Their Live in Madrid EP is only available on the US Google Play (last I checked, Madrid isn't in the US) and the only download store Live 2012 is available from is iTunes. Viva Coldplay helped me realise that paying to legally download music was finally a viable alternative to pirating, whereas MX Coldplay took a steaming shit all over virtually every download store other than (you guessed it) iTunes. Viva Coldplay gave one of their B-sides away for free as well as offering options to buy it, whereas the only B-side MX Coldplay have released is... well, you know the rest. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the entire point of MX has been to take all the goodwill Coldplay generated with their fans from the Viva era and then drive it straight into the ground.

 

So what does all this have to do with Rihanna and middlemen? Simple. Coldplay looked at the musicians -> middlemen -> fans equation and decided to cut the fans out. They decided they'd use their music to promote middlemen, rather than the other way around. Everything they have done in the MX era has been to the benefit of these middlemen, usually Apple. To this end, MX has been a huge success, one that's still going strong. As a musical statement and a measure of Coldplay's artistic integrity, it's been an enormous failure of their own making. As for whether the music's any good or not, that's an entirely moot point, since they've been doing everything possible to prevent their fans from listening to it. Everything short of just plain not releasing it, that is, which actually would've been preferable since it would lack the pretence that they actually bothered. 16 months on from MX? They killed it 4 months before they even released it.

[Jonny and the cake]

This thread is making me sad because i have, sadly, to agree

[Cobalt]

I still barely ever listen to it

[Guest howyousawtheworld]

I still barely ever listen to it

 

Absolutely. Just feels like a bit of a waste of time to me.

 

And I remember listening to 6 Music with Chris Martin on Steve Lamacq's show around the time of the release saying to himself (without prompting) that 'it's our best album'. Errrm yeah. Thinking of some of the lyrics in that album makes me wince at times. The melodies are probably the weakest he's ever written. He needs to take a good look at himself! Come on Chris, you know you can do better and that comment you made on Lamacq's show was forced from denial...I hope.

[speedofnashville]

I'll echo what someone said earlier in the thread... I think everything Coldplay does is better live, and that speaks really well of them. I've heard a lot of criticism of this album and really I don't understand it. My history with Coldplay started summer of 2011 when I bought AROBTTH, after getting acquainted with that album I bought the rest and was given MX that Christmas. I find all the albums to be incredible. I find that I'm especially partial to X & Y, I think it's great. But this album has marked and era of my life for me. I want to get MX tattooed on my arm or something because it means so much. The story that the album tells is beautiful, and the songs are spot on. I don't have any on the album that I don't like. I listen to MX at least every week and don't see any end in sight. It's up there with Coldplays work for me, I love it! Each to their own though! I do hope they take time out for the next album though. Artists like Gaga are over saturating fans with their stuff, it's more meaningful to take time off. Cheers to MX and cheers to LP6!

[coldplaymom]

For me, the MX album is very much associated with the MX Tour and I've had 2 in person thrilling performances by the band, up close and personal. So everything MX is positive in my mind.