[The Guardian] Coldplay: how can something so banal be so powerful?

[gai]

Coldplay: how can something so banal be so powerful?

 

There is a context to the band’s huge success. The worse life gets, the more they seek to reassure us

‘Coldplay capture something fundamental to contemporary living.’ Photograph: Marcelo Sayao/EPA

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@johnharris1969

 

One should always hesitate before quoting the words from pop songs. Obviously, lyrics are not written as poetry; in the absence of music, even Bob Dylan’s words can occasionally seem like the work of a chump. But sometimes the temptation becomes overwhelming.

 

Take, for example, Up & Up, the closing song on the latest Coldplay album, A Head Full Of Dreams, which came out on 4 December. Its second verse runs as follows: “Lying in the gutter, aiming for the moon / Trying to empty out the ocean with a spoon … How come people suffer, how come people part? / How come people struggle, how come people break your heart?” I don’t know what that riot of mixed metaphor and cheap sentiment means; its chief author, Chris Martin, probably doesn’t either. But whatever: as the song tumbles to its climax and massed voices assure us that “we’re gonna get it together”, you can hear the stuff of assured international success.

 

What is the meaning of Coldplay? The question may seem absurd. Certainly, the lyrics that adorn the band’s songs – mostly “cliches and generalisations”, as theGuardian’s Alexis Petridis recently put it – and the interviews they give only seem to confirm an overwhelming sense of blankness. There again, as any cultural theorist could tell you, what they may or may not have come to tell us isn’t the point: when you’ve sold 80 million albums, it’s legitimate to ask why. What does Coldplay music do to people? What needs does it meet? Will it ever go away?

 

Before we go any further, a confession. I like some of Coldplay’s music. They have a gift for melody and a knack of evoking emotion that makes their biggest hits almost irresistible. Sometimes – as on Fix You, arguably their defining song – the music becomes lachrymose. Often, it drifts into absolute nothingness. But when it comes to their hits, they usually locate the correct spot.

 

This is partly because their best compositions are liberally sprinkled with what the modern vernacular terms earworms. But at the heart of Coldplay’s allure is a talent for capturing something fundamental to contemporary living. The most I can say is this: their best songs make me feel like I am in a mobile phone advert, or sitting in a gleaming airport terminal, luxuriating in a brief moment of respite from sensory overload. They specialise in fuzzy, redemptive qualities that are almost indefinable, captured in the refrain at the end of Clocks, still their single greatest achievement: “Home, home, where I wanted to go.”

 

But God, their latest music is doing my head in. For A Head Full Of Dreams, they drafted in the Norwegian production duo Stargate, who have created music for Rihanna and Beyoncé. The residual earthiness in Coldplay’s music traceable to their origins as an indie-rock band has now disappeared: their songs now sounds gossamer-light, and so easy on the ear it sometimes threatens to disappear.

 

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‘In 2002 and beyond, the world was in need of existential balm, and Coldplay delivered.’ Photograph: Sarah Jeynes/BBC/PA

The album’s sleeve art is a rainbow-coloured mess of exotic birds, planets, and clouds. And the words! The lyrics are smattered with angels, diamonds and Egyptian pyramids. By way of proving that Martin is free of earthly pettiness, there are vocals from his ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow on a song called Everglow, an apparent celebration of the fact that love can endure even after divorce, whose title is a word for bliss he got from an American surfer.

 

The back of the CD booklet apparently features the band’s name in Hindi; a track built around a 13th century Sufi poem popular on mindfulness courses (which, says Martin, boils down to the idea that “every feeling that we have as humans is ultimately a blessing”) also includes a sample of Barack Obama singing Amazing Grace. Of course it does.

 

Coldplay arrived in 2000. They became international stars with the release of A Rush Of Blood To The Head, in late 2002. In between lay 11 September 2001, the sudden curtailing of an era of giddy hedonism, and the arrival of realities that were altogether more worrisome. Martin and co proved to be capable lightning rods for all this. Again, basic cultural theory will tell you that need not be a matter of intention, and in this case, it almost certainly wasn’t. But the world was in need of existential balm, and they delivered. Almost every Coldplay record since has dealt in much the same qualities: reassurance, redemption, an insistence that what it is to be human will somehow see us through (to take one example among many, witness a new song titled Amazing Day and its cringeworthy lines: “Hope has its proof / Your hand in mine / Life has a beautiful crazy design”).

 

Their songs seem to become lighter and more blithely optimistic in direct proportion to the troubled nature of the world. The worse everything gets, in other words, the more they seem driven to reassure us, in language often so banal it beggars belief. This is perhaps why they are still here, now much bigger than the fading U2, booked to play four nights at Wembley Stadium, and scheduled toentertain the crowd at the 2016 Superbowl.

 

On one level, this bothers me. It looks like another sign that popular music can now carry little more than emotional doggerel. To risk sounding hopelessly sniffy, that comes with a sense of musicians doing pretty much what serves the interests of power – “The Man”, as the hippies put it – and assuring us everything’s going to be OK when it plainly isn’t. But from another perspective, it might also suggest music re-emphasising what draws in most of its devotees: escapism, empathy and the simple acknowledgement that the sun always rises in the morning.

 

One of the most-reported human stories of the year came when a man called Davide Martello took his piano from Germany to the Bataclan in Paris after hearing about the terrorist attacks. He played John Lennon’s Imagine – that saccharine secular hymn, well suited to almost any occasion – and made people cry. But Coldplay had got there first, covering the same song within hours of the atrocities, at a gig in Los Angeles.

: the four of them at the lip of the stage, missing out the “no religion” line, delivering the song with their customary brand of guileless sincerity.

 

As with just about everything they do, it suggests Noel Coward’s oft-quoted point about the potency of cheap music, though it needs a bit of elaboration: in times as uneasy and fearful as ours, Coldplay’s unlikely magic is about how context – and enormous popularity – can give outwardly shallow art a power it almost doesn’t deserve.

 

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[gai]

yup, the guardian is at it again.. how many of these "how the hell are coldplay this big and successful despite them obviously being crap" articles can they write? they do have a few fair points, but all together is just over the top don't you think?

[ihaveabono]

yup, the guardian is at it again.. how many of these "how the hell are coldplay this big and successful despite them obviously being crap" articles can they write? they do have a few fair points, but all together is just over the top don't you think?

 

Haha, I agree. they are at it again. But ironically, the more they bash coldplay and the more they brand coldplay's music is crap the more they prove that Coldplay is already a part of our pop culture (for better or for worse haha) and is not going away anytime soon. It ironically proves Coldplay's endurance in pop culture despite changing musical climates. The mere fact that most music critics still write these stuff ironically proves Coldplay;s relevance.

[gai]

Haha, I agree. they are at it again. But ironically, the more they bash coldplay and the more they brand coldplay's music is crap the more they prove that Coldplay is already a part of our pop culture (for better or for worse haha) and is not going away anytime soon. It ironically proves Coldplay's endurance in pop culture despite changing musical climates. The mere fact that most music critics still write these stuff ironically proves Coldplay;s relevance.

hahaa! well said. but i find it interesting how the worst of the criticism comes from England.

[nvdmm]

I think unlike Petridis's review of the album this particular piece is very accurate. He avoids attacking the band personally and criticizes the music professionally. I don't agree with everything he says but most of his points are valid.

[gai]

He avoids attacking the band personally

i appreciated that.

 

the more obvious question is, how can you call music that resonates with so many in a timely manner, banal? music is visceral. so that makes this whole article nonsensical (although i agree with some points).

and justin bieber has 3/5 top singles positions this week. and they are going after coldplay. again.

[I ran away]

I agree with the criticism on AHFOD in this article, but stylising it to be a kind of "Coldplay disease" that the band has always suffered from right from the beginning is a lame argument I hear far too often nowadays.

[Jedi Leo]

hahaa! well said. but i find it interesting how the worst of the criticism comes from England.

 

It doesn't really surprise me. The English can be quite self-deprecating hehe

[alisbe]

hahaa! well said. but i find it interesting how the worst of the criticism comes from England.

It's said that "no man is a prophet in his own land"

[Sparky]

"How can a newspaper so banal be so powerful" :p

[gentleparachute]

hahaa! well said. but i find it interesting how the worst of the criticism comes from England.

 

I think they are the ones who feel the most "betrayed"... Let's face it - Coldplay started out in classic Brit Rock / Pop territory (with a twist) along with Travis, and had potential to end up sounding as "great" as U2, Oasis, Blur, etc. Now 15-20 years later Travis have landed in relative obscurity, "bed wetter" music (Keane, Snow Patrol, etc) is now accepted as legitimate Brit music (sometimes in favour of more Oasis-sounding and possibly musically better bands) thanks to our band, and Coldplay have decided to leave their roots behind (at least it appears for this album)... I'm sure it feels like a very personal betrayal and slap to the face - even more so because the masses have still responded to their music and stuck with them all these years, and because Coldplay have always taken the time and care with their music and given it the attention to detail and crafting it deserves - so somehow the critics have to find some sort of acceptance for it... So many people "can't be wrong". I'm guessing some of the previously more positive reviews have been written by fan-critics in favour of more established critics to give legitimacy to the masses (I'm sure plenty of the latter are still bitter over that), couple that with having to get behind a band who are moving albums at a time when music sales are declining, and also not being able to directly criticize the masses for 'poor musical taste'... That makes for a very potent, personal and bitter vendetta- almost in a class of its own. So I'm sure the British establishment are really feeling the sting... Particularly when a band they have supported turns around and says "rock music has nowhere left to go".

[gai]

I think they are the ones who feel the most "betrayed"... Let's face it - Coldplay started out in classic Brit Rock / Pop territory (with a twist) along with Travis, and had potential to end up sounding as "great" as U2, Oasis, Blur, etc. Now 15-20 years later Travis have landed in relative obscurity, "bed wetter" music (Keane, Snow Patrol, etc) is now accepted as legitimate Brit music (sometimes in favour of more Oasis-sounding and possibly musically better bands) thanks to our band, and Coldplay have decided to leave their roots behind (at least it appears for this album)... I'm sure it feels like a very personal betrayal and slap to the face

let's be honest, the british critics being wary or downright against coldplay is nothing new. this has been persistent since parachutes. even when viva came out, how many actually recognized it's accomplishment. so this is nothing, or very minimal, to do with feeling "betrayed" by ahfod.

[I ran away]

Yeah, I also think that while AHFOD may be feeding the flames of Coldplay critics further, this bashing has been there since the beginning and I cannot understand it. Some of the usual Coldplay-bashing arguments may be true for AHFOD, but as I said before, it's annoying that those critics always pretend it to be some kind of eternal Coldplay-disease.

[gentleparachute]

Previously there was hope (when they were indie darlings) that they would become "great"... I think the critics now feel all hope is lost (when perhaps more accurately maybe it was never "there") and a lot of reviews are reflecting that. Also I guess a lot of critics don't know how to respond- when was the last time someone shifted their sound so completely that an actual genre change was in order?

 

I'm just grateful that they were always heart-on-sleeve emotional, comforting and hopeful all these years... And glad for them that they're now more comfortable with things and are embracing their own skin... They've got to do that - after giving so much love and acceptance to everyone else, it's about time Coldplay did that for themselves too (accept and acknowledge themselves), while also defining a bit what they feel they're about (rather than just what everyone else thinks they should be about).

 

Again in a way, it reflects the times - never before (in Western society) has there been as much acceptance for people to be who they are and the freedom to be themselves... Think legalization of gay unions and the changing of attitudes towards this issue in the time Coldplay have been around. The fact that they can now choose how they want to be defined and not be constrained by other's expectations is pretty amazing in itself and a sign of the times - whether it's conscious or not, they are now challenging societal views and serve as a test for whether the winds have truly changed, or whether it's all just lip service in terms of accepting people for who they truly are... And as usual, they are a little bit behind the cutting edge curve but show relevance by bringing the masses along with them. As CM said a few years ago, they're still working to write that perfect, happy song...

[I ran away]

As CM said a few years ago, they're still working to write that perfect, happy song...

I think they already did and it is called Viva La Vida ! Well, minus the lyrics. If the lyrics were uplifting as well it would truly be the perfect happy song for me :)

[AMDB9]

I think they already did and it is called Viva La Vida ! Well, minus the lyrics. If the lyrics were uplifting as well it would truly be the perfect happy song for me :)

And Strawberry Swing!

[gai]

another guardian put down. at least this time it is not a whole article..

 

Elsewhere, there’s great excitement that Axl Rose and Slash are to reunite for a show. Some might describe both Lemmy and Guns N’ Roses as “cartoons”, in a way that is supposed to be reductive and derisive. Ozzy Osbourne is another one. It’s a criticism that many HM artists attract.

 

What these disparagers don’t realise is that sometimes people want the cartoon, particularly during a musical era dominated by Coldplay-style, carefully inoffensive ear drool.

 

In my opinion, Chris Martin isn’t good enough (loud, brilliant, funny enough) to be a cartoon – he’s fated to be a finessed corporate “word cloud”, encompassing all human emotion and therefore none. Faced with that, most would take a lively, colourful, charismatic cartoon any day. Which goes some way to explaining the widespread goodwill towards Lemmy and the hope that he’s rocking – wherever he is.

 

the guardian