Take all the X&Y and AROBTTH b-sides, slap them together and voilà! you have the best Coldplay album.

Viva La Vida and AROBTTH

 

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All! [emoji7]

 

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ARoBttH was my favorite album as a shy, introspective teenager who loved alternative British music. It's stellar and complex but a little sterile compared to to their more recent experimental sounds. Unfiltered emotionally and melodic as hell.  Will always be their most critically and commercially successful album and I respect that.

Viva is the band at their creative peak. Eno pushed them in every direction possible without some of the cringy pop elements of more recent albums. The lyrics are universal and thematic.  Death and All His Friends still blows me away with that piano/guitar combination. 42 has come to mean the world to me since my Mom passed. The metacritic score is insulting.

Everyday Life is personal beyond belief. Political lyrics abound plus some quasi Biblical elements and the French on Arabesque. Viva is more consistent to me, whereas the highs on EL are higher and the lows are lower. Still a lot of musical experimentation I never expected from them- Arabesque, When I Need a Friend and Cry Cry Cry come to mind. 

 

Each have songs I think are just good/great

ARoBttH (Politik, Green Eyes)

VlVoDaAHF (Reign of Love, Chinese Sleep Chant)

EL (BrokEn, Orphans)

 

And have several of the best songs I've ever heard

ARoBttH (God Put a Smile Upon Your Face, The Scientist, Clocks, A Whisper)

VlVoDaAHF (Cemeteries of London, 42, Viva la Vida, Death and All His Friends)

EL (Sunrise, Trouble in Town, Arabesque, Eko)

 

It's not a cop out to say they're each masterpieces to me for different reasons and each among my top 5 albums all time.

 

ARoBttH is their most mature and cohesive.

Viva is their most experimental and thematic.

Everyday Life is their most personal and underappreciated. 

 

I'd still say Viva but it's close. EL is a little too uneven and A Rush is their magnus opus to most for good reason.

Edited January 16, 20224 yr by HowCouldIForget

Viva La Vida. I almost shake and trow up with how overrated AROBTTH is.

I think that all boils down to what we intend with the word "masterpiece", because there are several albums in their production which could share that title. I find it tricky to think about this in absolute terms. Plus the album is the final outcome of an era, and this makes things more complex.

To me, Viva was their masterpiece. However there are other albums which are gems in their own ways and come close second.

I don't like every album of theirs, but I want to think that for every album they have tried their best. I know that they will never give a definitive answer, but it would be cool to ask what the band thinks about this. After all, it's their work, so they could give quite a different vision from the generally shared one! (but I suspect their answer wouldn't be x and y, as far as we know😅). Or maybe they would say their masterpiece is yet to come, who knows

Fun to see people posting again here! In 2015, I said VLV, which is still my personal favorite. I think you can make a good argument for almost every Coldplay album except MOTS, which I think is just objectively mediocre. 

In 2021, I think fans should start considering Everyday Life. Not everyone loved it initially, and even I had issues with the pacing and how some themes seems only lightly touched on in a somewhat superficial way (Trouble in Town, Guns, Eko). But now, I start to understand Chris' vision for the album a bit more and because all the songs are so damn good and the collaborations are so cool, I would maybe add EL to the candidate list along with VLV, AROBTTH, and Parachutes. 

I would say, AROBTTH is the masterpiece that made Coldplay. The first part of the album is probably their strongest combination of songs ever. Such good riffs, melodies and songwriting, which made them a stadium rock band. Politik is still one of their most epic songs.

But VLV with Brian Eno and Markus Dravs is the real masterpiece for me still. There is no point on the album, where I can say songwriting is weak. Great arrangements, great production and the whole album just feels complete. Big sounds and epic from start to finish.

Everyday Life is not as epic, but it's their best since VLV. It feels kind of effortless, pure and down to earth, that's what I really like about it. Saying "It just is what it is" goes best with it. It might feel uneven, but I would say this is also the magic of this album, this feeling of collection of fragments.

Parachutes is a great start, enjoyable listen from start to finish, showed their potential as songwriters, but lacks epicness as whole. Everything's Not Lost is a masterpiece from this album for me.

On all the other albums I can find some weaknesses, questionable songwriting and production in places - more or less. I might look at their discography differently in future though.

In terms of my taste in music, I think AROBTTH is their masterpiece, but in terms of production, concerts, creative and importance, VLV is the most complete in all of these aspects for me.

Very hard question...

IMHO, AROBTTH is their best album but Ghost Stories has a special place in my heart💗 

For me, I can't pick albums that songs I actively dislike, so I can't say Parachutes, AROBTTH, X&Y or A Head Full Of Dreams were their best album. I am inclined to say Viva La Vida is their best album, but while I don't dislike any songs from that album, there's only two songs I actively want to listen to, those being Chinese Sleep Chant and Death And All His Friends (three if you include The Escapist). I find that Life In Technicolor being an instrumental was a strange decision, because I love LiT ii on Prospekt's March. Equally, the version of Lover's In Japan on Prospekt's March is the better version for me. I feel Coldplay shot themselves in the foot there.

If I'm going to say VLV isn't their best album because of that reason, that means I need to pick a best album based on how many songs I want to listen to:

• Parachutes - 0
• AROBTTH - 2 (The Scientist, Politik)
• X&Y - 3 (Talk, X&Y, Speed Of Sound)
• Viva La Vida - 3 (as above)
• Mylo Xyloto - 7 (10 if including Mylo Xyloto, MMIX and A Hopeful Transmission) (Hurts Like Heaven, Don't Let It Break Your Heart, Up With The Birds, Princess Of China, Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall, Paradise, Charlie Brown)
• Ghost Stories - 8 (9 if including O) (Magic, Midnight, Oceans, A Sky Full Of Stars, Fly On, Always In My Head, True Love, Ink)
• A Head Full Of Dreams - 8 (A Head Full Of Dreams, Hymn For The Weekend, Up&Up, Adventure Of A Lifetime, Everglow, Army Of One, X Marks The Spot, Birds (Only just, the ending almost killed it for me))
• Everyday Life - 14 (15 if including Flags) (Arabesque, Orphans, Everyday Life, Sunrise, Church, Trouble In Town, Daddy, Broken, When I Need A Friend, Guns, Eko, Old Friends, Champion Of The World, the one with the Arabic name I can't copy and paste from Spotify)
• Music Of The Spheres - 9 (11 if including Music Of The Spheres and Alien Choir) (Higher Power, Humankind, Let Somebody Go, Human Heart, People Of The Pride, Biutyful, My Universe, Infinity Sign, Coloratura)

Well, by that metric, their best album in my opinion is Everyday Life.

As many of you pointed out, it's quite difficult to clearly state what does "masterpiece" mean.

In my opinion, ARoBttH is their most critically acclaimed album and will probably remain the most popular among non-fans. And for good reasons. It has great songwriting, dark lyrics and an overall uplifting tone, even in its darkest songs. It is also quite experimental and diverse, despite being "classic Coldplay" and part of their debut trilogy.

I love ARoBttH, it's really a great album. But I believe that VlVoDaAHF is their best work so far. I can't explain why, but that record resonates with my soul in a way nothing else does. They really produced something unique and still essentially Coldplay. The instrumentation is incredibly diverse (think of the santoor in LiT or the strings in "Yes" or even those ethereal vocals in "Chinese Sleep Chant") and the band with Brian Eno experimented more than they had ever done before. They also included influences from all over the world in their music and Chris wrote some of his best lyrics, someone mentioned VlV, I can add VH, Y and LiJ.

Viva is the album that made me love Coldplay and it still is my favourite album. However if someone asked me which album is their best I would answer "the one they never released!", meaning the acoustic Wedding Album they had planned right after Viva. It was meant as an even more experimental counterpart to its predecessor and from several interviews it appeared as if they were confident it would be even better than that one. They had also planned to make an animated movie in the style of the Beatles' Yellow Submarine to accompany the music. I don't know what happened at some point, when they decided to scrap everything and merge the project with MX. Don't get me wrong, Mylo is a wonderful record, but I still wonder what would have been if they had kept the two projects separate.

After Mylo they gave up on trying to make a "revolutionary" album and preferred to focus more on "thematic" albums, alternating one more somber with one more upbeat, but without the intent of making "the album they would be remembered for" as they once kept saying.

Anyway, I hope with all of myself that their masterpiece is yet to come and I believe they are still capable of making something really great. So let's keep our fingers crossed...

Edited January 19, 20224 yr by TheLostColdplayer

Viva La Vida Obviously. They won the most awards for that album.

Parachutes let me fly in my own head

AROBTTH makes me want to drive

X&Y works as a medicine for worrying

Viva La Vida brings me into a creative mood

Mylo Xyloto asks me out to run

Ghost stories keeps me relaxed

A Head Full Of Dreams gives me compassion

Everyday Life proves that it can grow on me with the day

Music Of The Spheres makes me look forward to the concert

They are all masterpieces but a compilation of the Higher Power and My Universe versions would take the crown😝

 

Even if I flip flop on which is my favorite. I think VLV is the culmination of talent and execution from the band.

On 12/4/2015 at 4:52 PM, I ran away said:

AROBTTH. Its atmosphere and flow are second to none.

 

The better individual songs clearly come from X&Y for me, but X&Y doesn't have this amazing flow as an album that AROBTTH has.

Six years on and I stand by what I said on, apparently, the very day A Head Full of Dreams came out.

Of course now we have Everyday Life as a new contender. Everyday Life is certainly the masterpiece of the Coldplay of the 2010s to me. But if I consider all of the band's discography, nothing else compares to AROBTTH as a masterpiece album and X&Y as a masterpiece collection of songs, and with the band catalogue drawing to a close sooner than expected, I'm a hundred percent certain nothing ever will.

The masterpiece was Everyday Life and A Rush of Blood to the Head. One was very experimental and explored so many unconventional styles like chruch, asian and was not a album for hits, and a huge piece of art. and also Chris voice was touching and very good so vulnerable in Daddy, so personal and deep. And A Rush of Blood to the Head, because of her composition quality musically and lyrically.  Politik was the perfect song and sound more vulnerable then in surface and a epic song, slow in the verses and rock in the chorus. Depist Chris voice sound better to Parachutes, it's wasn't sound always in point in the rhythm (i noticed that in In my Place in particulary) to the debut of end like in Viva la Vida and Ghost stories. But it's didn't low the quality of the composition and how the songs sound (except The Whisper, the only bad song of the album) in the album.

On 1/31/2022 at 5:36 AM, I ran away said:

Six years on and I stand by what I said on, apparently, the very day A Head Full of Dreams came out.

Of course now we have Everyday Life as a new contender. Everyday Life is certainly the masterpiece of the Coldplay of the 2010s to me. But if I consider all of the band's discography, nothing else compares to AROBTTH as a masterpiece album and X&Y as a masterpiece collection of songs, and with the band catalogue drawing to a close sooner than expected, I'm a hundred percent certain nothing ever will.

Of course it's A Rush of Blood to the Head. Even the band themselves believe this to be the case. Chris and Guy did a funny interview recently and when asked what they would ask aliens to listen to if they ever met one, they jokingly said "here is our second album". 

10 hours ago, nvdmm said:

Of course it's A Rush of Blood to the Head. Even the band themselves believe this to be the case. Chris and Guy did a funny interview recently and when asked what they would ask aliens to listen to if they ever met one, they jokingly said "here is our second album". 

Interesting, do you have a link for that interview? I didn't see it!

On 4/2/2022 at 12:49 AM, I ran away said:

Interesting, do you have a link for that interview? I didn't see it!

Sure:

 

X and y

I would say Viva La Vida for me. Everything was interesting about that album, clothing, artwork and so on.

I have a strange feeling though that their selftitled last album could be a new masterpiece.

Edited April 21, 20224 yr by Famous_Old_Painter