Famous Old Painter

If they were going to do that alternative record, wouldn't it make more sense to release it with a different name and visual theme?

If I were in Coldplay's position, I'd make Vol. 2 an EP like Kaleidoscope and Vol. 3 a live album. Because making two more full length albums like MOTS at this point would be suicide.

Is this a shreds video?

People of the Priiiiiide Can't take credit for this, as much as I wish I could

I don’t want music that sounds like what they were doing 20 years ago. Coloratura came out this year, Everyday Life less than two years ago. I want stuff that sounds like what they’re capable of doing now, and they’re clearly capable of a lot better than the bulk of MOTS.

I’m not giving up on Coldplay. I loved GS, I loved EL, I love Coloratura, and both MX and AHFOD have grown on me over the years. They still have it in them to create amazing music. But they also have a need or desire to create chart friendly pop music that packs out stadiums. So Coldplay are gonna go back and forth, that’s just the way they are now. That said, I hope the near-universal backlash MOTS has received makes them re-evaluate their approach for Vol. 2 (or whatever LP10 ends up being)

Incoming with some hot hot hot takes - POTP is the biggest missed opportunity on the album imo. The demo had a lot of promise and the live versions were intriguing, but turning it into a Max Martin produced glam rock stomper is not it. They should've saved the demo for one of the more alternative leaning albums. - The same is true for Spanish Rain/Don Quixote/Life is Beautiful and Infinity Sign. It's kind of a shame to witness a song evolve over the course of a decade, only to be reduced to an instrumental interlude. - I don't know how much truth there is to the rumour that MOTS and EL were written around the same time, but if that's the case I really wish Coloratura was used for EL instead. It fits EL's more understated and experimental vibe perfectly and does not fit MOTS at all. It's a bit weird wishing an album didn't have its best song on it, but honestly MOTS works better as a unified piece without it.

I’m digging it less with every listen, it has to be said At least we have Coloratura

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

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.”

Biutyful being one of the better tracks is a plot twist I didn’t see coming

Brandon Flowers - Gets torn a new one for "are we human or are we dancer?" Chris Martin - "Hold my sphere"

Let's not forget it shares an album with My Universe

? (MOTS2) says hi

It's not their strongest album lyrically, that's for sure

People are allowed to not like it. People are allowed to like it. You should be free to express your opinion whatever it is.

Knee-jerk song ratings imho Brilliant Coloratura Great Humankind Human Heart People of the Pride Infinity Sign Good Higher Power Biutyful Eh Let Somebody Go My Universe

Given the amount of spoilers/previews/singles/whatever this album turned out pretty much exactly as I expected it to

Humankind is what I wanted Higher Power to be

I'm digging the song a lot more than I thought I would

The majority of Biutyful is in chipmunk voice. You've been warned

Can confirm the full album leak is legit. Listening now

MOTS2 has to be the most pointless interlude in Coldplay history imo

Everything except Humankind, POTP and Biutyful

Take the drums out of Infinity Sign and I'd get a real Escapist/Midnight vibe off it. Jon Hopkins-esque for sure