- Gabriel

Great work! I was definitely curious about this. It was an effect I definitely wasn't expecting based on the live version.

James Blake comparison?! YEEESSSS Probably not that accurate (Coldplay is pretty damn far from what James Blake is doing), but still gets me excited....

They named the "Life in Technicolor ii" video one of the best videos of 2009. Doesn't seem very anti-Coldplay to me. Also, just look at some of the compliments in the Viva review: Strawberry Swing: "Blissful nostalgia permeates 'Strawberry Swing' so thoroughly it's impossible to deny its 'perfect day'" Lost: "a uniquely alluring smash and live staple for years to come" Violet Hill: "honest-to-God Scary Monsters* mutant funk" *Scary Monsters is a critically regarded David Bowie album.

That list is ridiculous. This album is probably not even in the top thousand darkest albums ever. This is an album with hope peeking around every corner. It doesn't wallow in despair or declare life hopeless. Seriously, "Green Eyes" is on this album. This isn't saying it's a bad album. It's just not the musical equivalent of Edgar Allen Poe.

"Fix You (a Drink)" is hilarious because that's exactly what a sleazy club remix of that song would be called.

Wow! Thank you for a very precise and concise answer. I must say, I really thought it was Kylie. Where did you learn this?

At the end of the song, before Chris sings a line from the chorus for the final time, there is a very noticeable female vocal part. After hearing Lhuna, I suddenly wondered if this vocalist was actually Kylie Minogue, because it sounds a lot like her voice (granted, the only performance of hers I've heard is her part in Lhuna). I haven't heard any information so much as acknowledging that those vocals are there, much less who performed them, and it made sense to me that maybe they asked Kylie to provide a quick vocal part for the song while she was in the studio recording her part for Lhuna. Any word on this? Does it make sense to anybody else?

Josh, trust me, you're not the only one who feels stupid for giving up the open space by the tent. My group got there around 6:50 and that space was still there, but the tent blocked the view of the stage, so we moved camp. Here is my review, in which I tried to touch on slightly different aspects than in Josh's thorough review so as not to be repetitive: My group got a decent lawn seat – for an idea of where, it was essentially the mirror image of where Coldplay showed up on the other side of the lawn. This is the only Coldplay concert I’ve been too, but it certainly felt like they had nailed a routine and knew how to go through the motions without seeming stale. I was surprised at how few people vocally recognized songs like Yellow, 42, In My Place, and even Billie Jean (my friend, who knew all the other songs they played, asked me if it was a “B-side or something”). Songs like The Scientist, Lovers In Japan, and Viva La Vida (no surprise there) were the ones that got the loudest immediate reaction. This led me to think that most of the people at this show were not like my friends and I, who had heard every album track and then some, and instead were people who probably had a couple favorites on their iPod and didn’t know the rest. Glass Of Water got virtually no reaction when they started it up. As for the quality of the actual playing, the band was great, but that’s to be expected. Chris actually hit some blatantly wrong notes on the piano a handful of times (not “jazzy” or “experimental”; his hand slipped or something), but nobody seemed to care. His voice was especially strong, considering how weak it always sounded to me in the live recordings I have. The other band members were totally solid, and I loved Chris’ apparent adoration for Will. One of the best moments was a partially improvised shanty during the acoustic lawn set where Chris threw out lines like “When you’ve been on this leg of the tour since June / It’s nice to play in Raleigh, North Carolina, under the full moon” (big reaction) and “We’ve gotta play the show for the girls and boys / ‘Cause we hear those people in Raleigh make a lot of f---ing noise” (bigger reaction). Overall, it was great to observe how hard the band works to please its audience, with the confetti and balloons and the lawn set (Green Eyes was sublime). On an incredibly specific note, I loved it when Johnny took care of the ending of Cemeteries Of London (playing the little piano riff on his guitar). As for the opening bands, I was thoroughly impressed by Elbow, and will probably buy some of their material based just on how well they played. Kitty, Daisy, and Louis were nigh on unbearable by the end of the set by virtue of how similar all of their material sounded, no matter how talented they might have been (My friend nicknamed them Diarrhea because, in his words, “They sound like sh--”). However, they provided one of my favorite moments of the concert when they introduced their Jamaican guest player. He yelled “Ya!” into the microphone, and the crowd reciprocated. He followed up with “Ya ya!” and the crowd followed suit. He finished with “Ya ya yaaaaaaaaaaa!”, dragging out the last “Ya” and making his voice lower and more intense as the band started up. It was an epic introduction and, for a moment, made me think the band was about to play something interesting. Then Mr. Jamaica whips out his trumpet and launches into the corniest song of the whole set. I almost cried laughing. Also memorable was when, in the last song, they repeated the same bar of music for a minute and a half. It literally sounded like a CD was skipping. The crowd applauded when they finally broke off. Great show, and will always be a great memory.

My thoughts exactly. I was expecting some fluffy pop song and WHAM, it's the darkest Coldplay song I've ever heard. Chilling. Do wish the lyrics were more inventive though.

That is a very cool idea, though I love the atmospheric introduction. In that same song, I wish they would go into a different key for the guitar solo. Where they do the bang! chords (c#minor) just before the solo, they could do c#minor four for four bangs then C#Major four times, then change to f#m for the solo. And they would go back to c#minor later. And you have no idea how much I wish they had kept a steady rhythm going when the first part of "42" transitions into the second. Just a few piano chords keeping time would make the transition seem so much less choppy for me. In "Glass of Water", I wish that instead of going from the second chorus into the ambient bridge, they would have just charged right into the guitar solo. And I wish the guitar solo were epic in that song; it just seems like two or three notes the way it is. Don't get me wrong; I like all three of these songs.

Eh, common complaint. But it seems like critics are completely willing to ignore the steps forward the band has actually taken. If Viva La Vida had followed A Rush of Blood to the Head instead of X&Y, then I think people would be much less critical; X&Y basically summed up everything critics didn't like about Coldplay in one package. Much of the criticism is fair about some of the band's "trilogy" music, but I wish critics would notice the improvements instead of sticking to their pessimistic guns. And I have heard a Conor Oberst song or two; it's just a matter of taste who is better. And I've read reviews that rip into Oberst for producing fad music, much in the same way this person complains about Coldplay.

I love how the track sounds, but the lyrics are (like somebody said earlier) pretty much just words that rhyme. I remember reading that one reason they took out the lyrics is that they made no sense, and I respect the band a ton for checking themselves like that. God knows they could have gotten away with nonsense lyrics, and it's refreshing to know they tried to make sure the album was actually good and not just appealing. And it was especially kind of them to make this alternate version available anyway. (On another note, I think Chris' lyrics took a huge step forward with the last album, so don't think I'm dissing his lyrics or anything.)

I'm with you guys; I was open to this and thought it could've turned out great but Jay-Z's part just didn't do much for me. I'm not familiar with Jay-Z's other material, though. And Chris loves it! I wonder if he's A. more perceptive than me or B. just ecstatic that he got Jay-Z to star in a song.

I tend to lump 'Til Kingdom Come, Reign Of Love, and this song in the same category of acoustic country-gospel; it helps this lumping that they all sound very different from the rest of Coldplay's music (or at least what I've heard). 'Til Kingdom Come is still my favorite of the three, but I genuinely like this song too.

That's sort of what I thought, but I imagined the transition at 1:53. It (sort of) changes keys at that point and the mood changes from despair to hopefulness. Both points seem logical, though. I just don't think the instrumental ending is Poppy Fields, or at least I don't want to think it is. By way, I love the instrumental ending because to me it represents how the troubles in Prospekt's March have not been resolved; the band could have wrapped the song up in a purty little ending chord, but I think the curious ending does the theme more justice. It's like Prospekt's March is the speaker realizing all the things that are going wrong, Poppy Fields is the speaker hoping for something better, and the ending is him staring into the distance realizing that for all his hopefulness these problems will not go away. By not offering a resolution, the problems he sings about seem much more real. At least to me. Yup!

I can not express how much I love Coldplay for taking one of the most epic songs they've ever written and putting the chorus in 7/4 time. They pull it off amazingly well, especially based on the fact that nobody here has said that the chorus sounds weird. I just love how they're trying new things (new for them, anyway). And the song is rockin' too.

I thought it was just a (completely hilarious) anti-intro meant to make the listener go "What just happened?" It briefly sounds like the song is going to be a piano ballad, and then the unexpected arrangement steps in.

I would expect "See You Soon" and maybe "Bigger Stronger", and I'd love it if "Easy To Please" was on there but that seems unrealistic. But yeah, almost certainly something from Prospekt's March, and maybe a new song ("Lhuna" anyone?). If they put "Death Will Never Conquer" on there it would make me chuckle. I do quite like that song.

I would love for "Postcards From Far Away" to appear on the single. It's short and wordless and very different from the rest of their oeuvre, so it seems like a natural choice for a B-side.

I know I'm excited. I think we can expect the lyrical Life In Technicolor and Chris' duet with Kylie, and maybe some of those songs that didn't make it onto the record (Prospekt's March, Glass Of Water, Famous Old Painters). I think it would also be cool if they re-recorded an old B-side or pre-Parachutes cut.

This was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. But it was still funny, maybe just from the fact that it was essentially a bunch of random answers to unknown questions.

If you have iTunes, you can just create a new file of only Reign Of Love. How: Right-click the song. Choose Get Info. Choose the Options tab. Highlight "0:00" in the Start time box. Type in "3:56". Click OK in the bottom right corner of the box. Right-click the song. Choose Convert Selection to ___ (it will probably be either AAC or MP3) The new file will be only Reign Of Love. You may want to rename your new file so you don't get it confused with the old one, and you should go back to the original song and change the Start Time back to 0:00. And you don't have to use exactly 3:56; that's just about when Reign Of Love starts. You can do this for Yes and Death And All His Friends as well.

I heard Yes on Sirius Alternative Radio. They even followed it up with Chinese Sleep Chant. But you're right, it doesn't really have marketability, though it is one of my favorite songs on the album. I think they could play it on the radio and it would probably go over well, but I feel like they just pick formulaic stuff like Sexyback or Bleeding Love instead of trying something different.

I totally agree. For a while I was obsessed with trying to write weird chord sequences that still sounded good, and the thing I learned the most is that the chords don't matter nearly as much as how you play them. However, if you play weird chords in a way that lets you pull them off, it's very effective. Probably the weirdest sequence I came up with: D | Gm6/D | Bbm6/D | Dm7 | Bmaj7 | Em/A | Gmaj7 | Gb13 | Bmaj7 | Em/A | Gmaj7 | FdimMaj7 | E7 | Eb7 | A7 | A7 | It was meant to be the climactic ending to a song. I don't know if a melody would possibly work with it.

Lyrically, Bucket For A Crown shares a similar theme with Viva La Vida, but connecting the two musically would be a huge stretch. BFaC is decidedly in a minor key and occasionally lops a beat off of the end of a measure. Viva La Vida is in steady 4/4 and uses a totally different chord sequence. Not to mention that the melodies sound nothing alike. But I feel like Chris might have used BFaC's lyrical theme to develop Viva La Vida. You never know.