🪐 Coldplay: Music of the Spheres 🪐 | Out Now! | Discussion

[thomasPh]

Guy On apple music:

 

So, seem the best title is the one where Max Martin is less present.

Edited October 14, 2021 by thomasPh

[Eskapist]

I think everything has already been told ... Music of The Spheres is not Coldplay's best record for sure. It's also the first time I don't take a Coldplay album as a whole and I know it goes with the " one song for one sphere " idea but ... I don't feel it. The band has always been so minutious with the atmosphere of their other eras that I can't help feeling something a bit too bland and neutral. 

It doesn't mean the songs are bad : Human Heart, Infinity Sign and of course Coloratura sound really amazing to me. Maybe the problem comes of the way they thought about it at the beginning : it feels like they wanted a record to tour with and they made a universe after that statement. I wanted them to be free from the beginning and release something from their pure musicality. I don't know how they worked on this one, it feels like Chris would send ideas to the other members from his studio in L.A and they just followed the lead, with maybe less brainstorming and big studio sessions than Everyday Life. Coloratura feels like when they finally got together and made a song together, as old friends.

Still I can hear Chris and Coldplay's talent, I know it's here. But it could have been done differently... Anyway. Love them ♥

Edited October 14, 2021 by Eskapist

[eddmen]

7 minutes ago, thomasPh said:

On apple music:

 

So, seem the best title is the one where max martin is the least present.

It makes sense, it is a beautiful song and even when it has Coldplay brand on it, feels like something completely new. But being realistic the average consumer will not show interest on those kind of songs and you can tell it based on the views Coloratura has. The band and the label know it and after all they need to have a profit which I totally understand. And I'm happy they gave us that masterpiece ?

[ToniMoreno]

18 minutes ago, thomasPh said:

Guy en apple music:

 

Entonces, parece que el mejor título es aquel en el que Max Martin está menos presente.

Well, I think Guy is very honest and sows everything very clear with this album.

Coloratura could be what the band whis to do and the singles and collaborations impositions of Warner...

[SPC7]

Got no problem with a poppy album, obviously not their best but the majority of these songs will sound great in a stadium which is what they were going for I think.

Biutyful and People of the Pride my picks after Coloratura of course. 

[TealAppeal]

2 hours ago, Famous_Old_Painter said:

I hope not....

That abbreviation could be anything really.

A website called acronymfinder says it might be:  Fight for the Future

That makes some sense because the band has expressed more desire to be increasingly more environmental in what they do etc.

[Famous Old Painter]

You don’t become one of the biggest bands in the world without sticking to a system. In Coldplay’s case, that means starting every album with an agreed-upon title that dictates the project’s direction, from songwriting to production style to visuals. “It allows us a little bit of discipline in the studio knowing what we're trying to build,” bassist Guy Berryman tells Apple Music. “If you're building a building without any kind of architect's drawings, you would just start piling bricks on top of each other.” This preparation particularly came in handy in the case of a paralysing global pandemic. Since 2019's Everyday Life was always intended to be stripped-down and introspective, without the customary world tour, the band already had a trove of songs earmarked for a proper larger-than-life affair and a vision for their use. They knew it would be called Music of the Spheres and they knew it would be helmed by Swedish über-producer Max Martin (no relation to frontman Chris), a partnership they kicked the tires on with the Everyday Life track “Orphans”. “He's just so talented and everything just meshed together so well with everybody's personalities in the studio,” Berryman says. “We had thought ahead to playing in big stadiums.”

Lead single “Higher Power” could not have made those blockbuster intentions clearer or been a better showcase for (Max) Martin’s trademark pop sheen. The entire project is so imbued with youthful spirit that five tracks have emojis as titles. “Let Somebody Go” features Selena Gomez, while “My Universe” boasts none other than K-pop phenomenon BTS, who could always use some brains to pick as they learn how to navigate megastardom. “I think they're bigger than us,” Berryman says. “We should have been asking them.” Read on for behind-the-scenes tales of making Music of the Spheres.

“?”
“That’s an intro piece called ‘Music of the Spheres’. We always make albums as a whole, and we started putting interludes and musical sections between songs, almost like palate cleansers.”

“Higher Power”
“I think people needed to have something uplifting. We wanted to put out this optimism and positivity into everything on this album. The famous story which is going around about this song is how Chris kind of was tapping out the drum pattern on a bathroom sink, and he recorded it on his phone and then went and wrote the song on top of it.”

“Humankind”
“You can sketch ideas out in the studio sometimes, and that was one we were really kind of struggling with before Max took the reins. It didn't sound very fresh; it had a good energy, but was maybe just a little bit too rock for us, and he really gave it more of a modern shine. It could be from just editing the basic song and the song structure or it could be adjusting slightly the rhythm pattern to make it all stick together better.”

“✨”
“It's an interlude.”

“Let Somebody Go” (feat. Selena Gomez)
“It's just a really lovely ballad. And quite early on we realised it needed a female counterpart to the vocal. And we were very grateful that when we asked Selena to sing on it, she loved the song and was happy to do so. Collaborations in general are something that we've done more of recently. We never really used to do it before. When we were younger, we kind of locked ourselves in a room and felt we had to prove everything ourselves. But I think as time has gone on, it's become more interesting for us to work with other people from different parts of the world, different genres. It just adds colour and character to the music.”

“❤️” (feat. We Are KING and Jacob Collier)
“We love the way that sound shaped up with all the stacked layers of vocals; it's almost like a modern-sounding gospel song in some ways. Sometimes as a musician, it's my job to step in and say, 'Actually, the best course of action for me is to not play anything at all, because what we created here has a much more unique sound.' You have to take your ego out of the picture and understand that the best job you can do is leave something alone. Because then it allows the other songs around it to sound bigger and fuller.”

“People of the Pride”
“We started the song probably over 10 years ago and couldn’t really finish it. Again, this was one which Max really helped shape sonically. The way we had it before, it sounded a little bit old-fashioned, almost like glam rock. What Max managed to do was take the energy and layer in a way which preserved that feel but also made it sound very modern at the same time.”

“Biutyful”
“That's quite an interesting song from a production point of view, because it's really kind of pushing the boundary for us in terms of vocal identity. The manipulated voice is almost like an alien character singing this song. Is it Chris' voice? That is highly, highly confidential. Nobody will ever know. It's going to be a big old secret.”

“?”
“It’s an interlude.”

“My Universe” (feat. BTS)
“BTS were asked in an interview who they'd like to collaborate with, potentially, and a couple of the guys said they'd love to collaborate with us. A lot of the themes on this album are about bringing people together and taking away divisions and walls and boundaries and all of these human constructs that keep people apart. So we felt like this would be great because it's an unusual collaboration between people who are known to come from a different genre and completely different part of the world.”

“♾️”
“That is not an interlude, it’s a longer piece—a collaboration with an old friend of ours who has been on our albums before, Jon Hopkins. He's an unbelievably talented musician, piano player and arranger. He works in an electronic genre on his own music, so he has the ability to create these very beautiful landscapes in a way that none of us can really do.”

“Coloratura”
“Each album can quite easily be defined by the singles you release on the radio, and it's always important to us when we make albums to include many different moods and textures and styles. So it was important to us, as a counterbalance to some of the poppier songs, to have something which was unashamedly long and complicated. It started off with more of a conventional song structure, then Chris came in one day and showed us the arrangement including all these interludes and sections between the parts we were already familiar with; it was a big challenge to piece it all together. Max's involvement on that song was extremely minimal; if he got hands on it, I think it would be chopped up into something a lot shorter, the chorus 10 seconds in.”

[JackColdplay]

Old Coldplayer checking in, well not an old person, but a fan from the 00s. What has happened to this band? It’s just awful. How can a band go from writing such masterpieces on another level to this utter rubbish? It’s like Chris Martin has gone fully loopy and they all just go along with his insane ideas. So depressing because they were so good, Chris and the band were genius, now it’s just embarrassingly bad. 

[SPC7]

7 minutes ago, JackColdplay said:

Old Coldplayer checking in, well not an old person, but a fan from the 00s. What has happened to this band? It’s just awful. How can a band go from writing such masterpieces on another level to this utter rubbish? It’s like Chris Martin has gone fully loopy and they all just go along with his insane ideas. So depressing because they were so good, Chris and the band were genius, now it’s just embarrassingly bad. 

They're just trying out new stuff. I don't know why people think they'd churn out the same kind of music for 20 years, they'd probably get criticised for that as well!

[JackColdplay]

2 minutes ago, SPC7 said:

They're just trying out new stuff. I don't know why people think they'd churn out the same kind of music for 20 years, they'd probably get criticised for that as well!

I don’t care if it’s different. It’s just that they’re not very good songs. 

[Reflektor!]

BRING BACK BRIAN ENO.

[JackColdplay]

1 minute ago, Reflektor! said:

BRING BACK BRIAN ENO.

I was literally just about to say that. 

[Steggars]

4 minutes ago, JackColdplay said:

I don’t care if it’s different. It’s just that they’re not very good songs. 

I gotta disagree there, of course you're valid for your own opinion as am I but they hit a new height with these new songs and venturing out to new featurettes, we thought back in the mid 2010s that it was just gonna be Jay-Z and Rihanna that they [officially] collabed with and that was it with the release of GS and the unofficial credit to Beyoncé and Noel Gallagher in AHFOD. It all comes down to how you view what the change is, you of course see it as bad, others won't and both of those are okay. To me this is an exciting new pathway to explore for Coldplay, if you go to the same stuff people get bored of it more often than not. It's a bit blunt to go slate Chris for wanting to experience new ideas though... 

[TealAppeal]

22 minutes ago, JackColdplay said:

Old Coldplayer checking in, well not an old person, but a fan from the 00s. What has happened to this band? It’s just awful. How can a band go from writing such masterpieces on another level to this utter rubbish? It’s like Chris Martin has gone fully loopy and they all just go along with his insane ideas. So depressing because they were so good, Chris and the band were genius, now it’s just embarrassingly bad. 

I sorta know how you feel.

To be fair I don't loathe Coldplay's new stuff but I feel their library of work is like an ocean it ebbs and flows for me.

Parachutes - Decent

ARoBttH - Adored 

X&Y - Decent / Mixed Feelings

Viva - Adored 

Mylo - Decent / Mixed Feelings

Ghost Stories - Adored

AHfoDreams -  Decent / Mixed Feelings

Everyday Life - Adored

[Reflektor!]

Ranked:

 

1. Coloratura (10/10) - 'Nuff said, gorgeous music.

2. Beautiful (8/10) - I really enjoy this, so strange and pretty.

3. Humankind (7/10) - Fun! Catchy!

4. Human Heart (7/10) - Pretty ballad, nice song.

5. Higher Power (7/10) - Good chorus, great verses, lazy in the middle-eight.

6. People of the Pride (6/10) - Epic in some parts, cringe in others

7. My Universe (6/10) - Same.

8. Infinity Sign (6/10) - Yeah, it's nice.

9. All the Interludes - (5/10) - Meh.

10. Let Somebody Go (4/10) - Boooooring.

 

Overall, it's... fine. It's there. It's colourful and varied, but incohesive and slight. There's still a lot of creativity in this band, but they need an Eno figure to bring it back out of them again. Doesn't touch Everyday Life.

[Sonic85]

Let Somebody Go is so damn dull. 

[IcebatofvalikinRRBZ8]

Interludes- 5/10

Infinity Sign- 10/10

Humankind- 9/10

POTP- 7.5/10

Beautiful- 10/10

Let Somebody Go- 8/10

Human Heart- 6.5/10

My Universe- 10/10

Higher Power- 9/10

Coloratura- 5/10 (Up & Up better closer)

 

Edited October 15, 2021 by IcebatofvalikinRRBZ8

[JackColdplay]

6 minutes ago, TealAppeal said:

I sorta know how you feel.

To be fair I don't loathe Coldplay's new stuff but I feel their library of work is like an ocean it ebbs and flows for me.

Parachutes - Decent

ARoBttH - Adored 

X&Y - Decent / Mixed Feelings

Viva - Adored 

Mylo - Decent / Mixed Feelings

Ghost Stories - Adored

AHfoDreams -  Decent / Mixed Feelings

Everyday Life - Adored

I agree with most of what you said. Although I disagree with Everyday Life. I’ve just looked at my recent posts from the end of 2019, and apparently I was singing it’s praises, but I’ve not listened to a single song from it since. For me VLV was the best, utterly incredible and will go down as my favourite album for ever, MX was a bit meh, you could see the beginning of the end, but there’s some great songs on there. But then plot twist, they pulled it out of the bag with Ghost Stories. It’s just been mediocrity at best since then for me. I loved everything that went before. 
 

The songs with Rihanna and Jay Z I loved and consider iconic, I don’t mind the BTS song, but Selena Gomez? Emojis for song titles that my phone doesn’t even recognise? Really? I’ve got a friend with a Coldplay tattoo on his forearm, it’s not what he signed up for. 

[JackColdplay]

They’ve also gone way overboard with filling albums with less than a minute filler tracks. Life in Technicolour and Mylo Xyloto for example it worked, now it’s just disappointment. 

[TealAppeal]

Just now, JackColdplay said:

They’ve also gone way overboard with filling albums with less than a minute filler tracks. Life in Technicolour and Mylo Xyloto for example it worked, now it’s just disappointment. 

That is a valid criticism, in fact when I inserted Everyday Life cd onto my PC, I edited the song in audacity to ensure the track: "GOD = LOVE" was one collective piece. 

[Famous Old Painter]

Editing tracks together or separating them has just become par the course for Coldplay albums at this point

[JackColdplay]

13 minutes ago, Famous Old Painter said:

Editing tracks together or separating them has just become par the course for Coldplay albums at this point

Yeah but when you sell it as an entire planet or “sphere”..

[Strawberry Swinger]

1 hour ago, Eskapist said:

I think everything has already been told ... Music of The Spheres is not Coldplay's best record for sure. It's also the first time I don't take a Coldplay album as a whole and I know it goes with the " one song for one sphere " idea but ... I don't feel it. The band has always been so minutious with the atmosphere of their other eras that I can't help feeling something a bit too bland and neutral. 

It doesn't mean the songs are bad : Human Heart, Infinity Sign and of course Coloratura sound really amazing to me. Maybe the problem comes of the way they thought about it at the beginning : it feels like they wanted a record to tour with and they made a universe after that statement. I wanted them to be free from the beginning and release something from their pure musicality. I don't know how they worked on this one, it feels like Chris would send ideas to the other members from his studio in L.A and they just followed the lead, with maybe less brainstorming and big studio sessions than Everyday Life. Coloratura feels like when they finally got together and made a song together, as old friends.

Still I can hear Chris and Coldplay's talent, I know it's here. But it could have been done differently... Anyway. Love them ♥

wow you said it all. 

[JackColdplay]

For me Coloratura isn’t objectively bad, but it just seems like a not as good Moving To Mars. It would sound good in the background of a movie. The song with BTS is probably the best on the album for me, astoundingly. 

[Strawberry Swinger]

Whenever I see POTP I think about Power of the People first.