MosesTheMarshmallow

I for one am excited to get 48 songs ?

Here I go with another genre/style speculation, after listening to How You See the World. This is one of few, if not the ONLY, songs that involves a spoken/shouted lyric (as distinct from Lost+ and Miracles (Someone Special) having hip hop style rap). Listen to the 2nd verse, "We don't want to be rent trapped, we don't want to be shrink wrapped" which has a super cool effect at 2:15 since Chris, Jonny, and maybe Guy all shout the line at the same time. This made me think of some other artists that have employed similar techniques of spoken word over song. Consider Wolf Alice's Don't Delete the Kisses: ...or Johnny Marr (solo work post-the Smiths) and check out Jon Batiste - in this case it's a bit more rapping and a bit less spoken, but still a really cool way to take a melodically-driven jazz song and add some very rhythmic rap/speaking: Another related genre is rap rock. Check out this Muse B-side featuring the Streets. The musical style is very much a ripoff of Rage Against the Machine, which was a huge influence for early Muse. EDIT I realize A L I E N S has some spoken word with the “sir or madam” section so my initial claim was wrong. But still interested to see if they’ll push that style further!

Thanks to @TealAppeal for posting this link in the C+J thread. What a great performance by Chris and Jonny!!! -Violet Hill with extended intro that some have compared to Spies or AROBTTH. Very fun and makes me wish we were in the MX era with the Violet Hill to GPASUYF super-rocky version again. (By the way all these songs minus AROBTTH are in the same C# minor key, GPASUYF is in C# major). -A tidbit of Square One and Chris says he likes that song! Maybe they'll relearn it. ? -Sparks! It's a nice performance because on full band ones you can't really hear what Jonny is doing on the piano but here you can hear it and see his speedy transitions between piano and guitar. -Great version of Higher Power and reinforces the notion that if you were to turn the volume up on the guitars and pull back the synths 10% you'd end up with HLH, which I think is what everyone THOUGHT the song would sound like before it dropped. Jonny plays a few extra guitar parts even compared to the full-band acoustic version (eg some extra textures in the verses) which helps fill it out in a nice way. I wish the album version was closer to this but oh well. https://www.instagram.com/tv/CQbc2Bho0Ry/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

I know the one performance you mean - I always assumed this was because in the VLV era, Will would always sing the choruses in unison with Chris. Watch the video footage of this, and any other 2008-2009 performance and you'll see Will singing in the choruses. At the final chorus I think I only hear the vocal doubling at the end after the "oh's" finish, but hard to tell if it's Will's voice or Chris's. There's a separate question of is Will lip syncing, and the answer is maybe - supposedly he mentions he does in that master class he taught, though there are plenty instances of performances where you can hear Will make mistakes and stuff, which makes it seem like he doesn't lip sync 100% of the time either. Also I'm fairly certain Today Show's vocal track is not the same as American Idol/BRIT Awards. Chris sings certain things fairly differently the whole time and I'm not convinced any of it is playback. But I guess the bigger topic of is there lip syncing, obviously the answer is YES, and we just have to grapple with that as fans, recognising that many major artists do it and a few don't. But it's really hard to get away from the use of any backing tracks at all. Red Hot Chili Peppers reportedly did 100% playback (instruments and vocals) during their Super Bowl performance, though the playback is to a live pre-recorded track rather than a studio version. If that tells you anything about who does or doesn't do playback/lip-syncing.

Agreed...not sure why they didn't have one of the Love Choir members sing those ooh's??? Nice energy indeed, Chris's acoustic sounds on point. Sad about the lack of bass, and Jonny's guitar is woefully quiet. But Will does some cool stuff on the piano like on the album-acoustic version!! ^^^Acoustic stuff during the MX era was the best. ?

It's funny because I accidentally listened to the music video version BEFORE the lyric video with the studio version and I got quite confused. ? Also, remember when they just quietly released this gem...I've always thought Orphans is such a great song built on a very smart beat, bassline, lots of guitars, etc. My only complaint about the studio version is the kid voices are a bit much (wish they had saved it for the final chorus like in Up&Up where each successive choruses becomes progressively louder). Also some of the posts that seem to be having an existential crisis about Coldplay's authenticity based on an offhanded release of an acoustic version of a song seems a bit of an overreaction, but that's just my opinion. How can they be not authentic when you see a video like this vvvvv or Instagram Live concert from last year.

Can someone explain what Dolby Atmos is and whether us peasants can experience it?

This triggered some thoughts for me: -The acoustic guitar mixing actually reminds me a lot of Old Friends. I don't think it's bad, but I do find it a little loud relative to the other instruments. -I quite like the organ too! Reminds me of the organ on Careful Where You Stand. The near-lack of drums reminds me of the same, as well as things like See You Soon or any of the band's AHFOD era request songs where generally Will played piano. That kind of added a particular brand of intimacy that I found fun. -Agree on the vocal weirdness. I wish they had just kept Chris's and Will's vocals. The extra ooh's at the end are fun though, and kind of wish that was on the album version. -Agree on the electric guitar. There was some nice interplay between the piano and electric guitar especially in the 2nd verse and outro, but the live full band version still wins on having the most Jonny. -The kickass Guy bassline is basically gone, and Will's urgent drumming is also gone. If I had designed this experience I would've kept the bass and drums - perhaps on a cajon - and then have Chris on the piano or acoustic guitar only and Jonny on electric guitar. The acoustic version of POC actually sounds pretty good now. I totally forgot that existed.

I'm so excited by this guitar-synth thing. Jonny already makes such cool sounds on the guitar, whether that's the main riff in POC, the ambient intro of MX-era GPASUYF or AROBTTH-era Spies. Matthew Bellamy (guitarist of Muse) and Chris Wolstenholme (bassist) both run their instruments through lots of synth pedals and get super interesting results. Simple application - arpeggiator on the guitar More complex application - making dubstep with guitars and bass ?

What could be more phallic than Jonny's guitar. :lol: Agree - embracing the dance is interesting and speaks to a weird level of confidence from Chris. You may remember in 2008 - "I can't dance but I'm enthusiastic!" (at 1:25)

Fun video with great visuals! I kind of wish it had a bit more of a plot, but my guess is that HP is part 2, and parts 1 and 3 will make everything a lot clearer. Like lots of interesting things happen visually but it's not as plotless and delightful as say, the LIJ or Up&Up or ETIAW videos where it's clear that nothing is really going on but seeing the band do cool stuff. HP kinda reminds me of videos like Charlie Brown, HFTW, and POC where visually something really interesting is happening but really there's no discernible plot as opposed to videos with *really good plots* like say, Strawberry Swing or the Scientist. I guess I'm already projecting some of my emotions about HP in general, which is that I think it's a good song but lacks directionality/plot/build. I just listened to Midnight a moment ago and wow, that song really knows how to build and layer. So still trying to reserve judgment till we hear the whole album. Noel Gallagher did a 3-part music video (whoa, 10 years ago) that's pretty fun:

MX era versions of GPASUYF would disagree with you. ? But indeed they don't do enough stage improvisation when they're totally good enough to. ?

Where/when is this screencap? I find it kind of odd that Jonny has a guitar just sitting on the amp instead of on a stand (or being carried away by a roadie). Is this during the Scientist when he has the make the acoustic-to-electric switch? My dreaming heart would love for Jonny to play lap-steel inspired guitar on a flat guitar though (which is roughly the sound in Hypnotised). Also very present on the record Bon Iver by Bon Iver. That WOULD be cool. How about a collaboration with Radiohead instead. 2 Jonny's and 2 hairless drummers. That would break the internet....but probably not. Kind of interesting to come full circle to Radiohead and Muse though - a lot of people describe Parachutes as a watered down Oasis+Radiohead, and you kind of hear the RH influence on songs like Spies, High Speed, Bigger Stronger - the guitar sounds are quite reminiscent of the Bends. Meanwhile, Shiver is a blatant ripoff of Jeff Buckley's Grace. And I think either Chris or Guy has described GPASUYF as being rather Muse-inspired. But those are all pertaining to OLD Radiohead and OLD Muse, whereas both of these bands have gone a lot more electronic and experimental in the past 10-15 years. So ripping off and watering down NEW RH/NEW Muse would be rather fascinating. Which also reminds me, Coldplay has never quite done a proper take on dubstep the way that Muse's Unsustainable is very blatantly "let use guitars to sound like Srillex". Would be fun to see Coldplay try that kind of thing, though I know there are many dubstep haters out there. I guess my bottom line though is this - there's so much music out there, and sure maybe the BTS thing might happen, but there's just so much inspiration and new directions Coldplay could still take with this record because we haven't heard most of the songs!!!

Ah yes that would be super cool. This would mean Jonny playing the guitar with a violin bow. ? Thank you for reminding me of what that screencap reminds me of. This whole video is VERY Kaotica/HP vibes.

This is a pretty realistic prediction. I also agree MOTS to HP is sort of a funky transition and reminds me of how VLV noticeably has a different track 1-track 2 transition between the album and live shows (LIT -> COL vs LIT -> Violet Hill). I feel like every album that people have hated has had "something for the Oldplayers" - UATW/UFO/Charlie Brown, Fly On/the guitar solo in True Love/Ghost Story/Oceans, AHFOD/Everglow/Amazing Day/Up&Up, and much of EL (esp title track, Trouble in Town, Daddy). Ironically, there's sort of a weird non-overlapping set of populations who like some of the songs I've just named and dislike others. But this is my guest guess at which ones are the ones that appeal to Oldplayers and naysayers. So for this album, I'm putting my money on one 9 minute space opera atmospheric Pink Floydian X&Y track as the new version of UFO. Another 80s-esque thing I could see happening would be some proper slap bass funk (which HP is like 50% of the way there, with the way Guy plays the bass on that song). But I'm thinking like Panic Station by Muse. But who knows!

Shameless self plug, my band is called Racemates (https://racemates.bandcamp.com/), named after a similar concept in chemistry which is that it's possible to have compounds with 4 distinct atoms (eg a Carbon bonded to a Hydrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, and a Chlorine) and even though there's exactly the same atoms, 2 distinct arrangements in space that are mirror images and non-superimposable. We call the two versions left- and right-handed, and the mixture of left- and right-handed compounds with the same atoms are called "racemates" or a "racemic" mixture. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racemic_mixture It's a type of isomorphic!

Agree. POC and HFTW are actively enjoyable! I especially love Jonny’s big guitar riff in POC. Fun is a nice song too.

Having those words come from Guy and Will makes me think Big Weekend's mysterious nonbroadcasted song is NOT the BTS collaboration. A visit to the UK by BTS or even use of a BTS backing track/video seems like it'd be rather difficult to prevent from leaking, no? Also, they've already had a big collaboration with Beyonce arguably one of the most famous artists already. Though with BTS there is a non-English possibility, but then Arabesque already has its French lyrics. Racking my brain about other things the band hasn't yet done, how about: -Any of the boys (but most likely Will) singing lead vocals, or some kind of serious duet between Chris and another bandmember -An instrumental. No major Coldplay hit and very few actual Coldplay songs are instrumentals except for LIT (which has some vocals) or intro/interlude tracks like MX, MMIX, Colour Spectrum. -Relating to the previous, song involving some serious synthesizer-ing. Sure there are Coldplay songs with synths, but X&Y was the only album with any major exploration of how to use them in an interesting way. Coldplay has said in interviews that they really like this album Moon Safari by Air, which this song appears on - it was one of the albums that was "always playing when they met". This kind of use of synths = twiddling the knobs a LOT to get super interesting effects, fitting with the radio theme. Kraftwerk was just inducted into the Rock&Roll Hall of Fame, and they're a major inspiration too (so much so that of course Talk is sampled from their song Computer Love), so I could also a renewal of interest in that type of music. -Speaking of the radio theme, Radiohead's song National Anthem includes the use of samples of actual local radio playing wherever they are. I could see Coldplay doing something similar, except it would somehow use radio from all the planets. -An internally live-generative song like Radiohead's Everything In Its Right Place where as the song goes on they take samples of stuff Thom Yorke is doing and looping it extremely thoroughly, until at the end of the song it's only samples and no one playing live anymore. If anyone remembers the Dell perfrmance, Chris has those acoustic guitars that have launchpads attached to them, making it easy to trigger samples whilst playing guitar (Matthew Bellamy from Muse has a similar mechanism on his guitar but with a KAOSS pad). This is the exact technology that could lead to a song like this:

Random observation - Chris at 2 shows now has played a little piano at the end of Higher Power. Interestingly at Big Weekend, the song immediately after is SJLT, where he does NOT play piano. So he literally sat down to play the arpeggiated piano line at Glastonbury (before starting the Scientist) and at Big Weekend. I predict this is likely to be a snippet of a new song, ie whatever is after HP in the album or in the longer live setlist. And it will be a piano song in a similar key to HP. We shall see!

Based on Glastonbury, do we think HP definitely follows the instrumental on the album? That'sfairly likely, but do want to point out that during the EL era, at half the shows Sunrise is followed by ORPHANS instead of Church. And in most Viva shows, Violet Hill follows LIT instead of Cemeteries of London.

I think we can only safely assume there will be 12 albums released. ?

Brilliant! Sounds nearly exactly like what Jonny does live. ?

I don't know if there's a dedicated thread for this but check out Will on Drumathon's Twitch playing what seems to be an AHFOD-era setlist! https://drumathon.live/

Decent remix but it doesn't hold a candle to two of my favourite club/EDM songs of the 2010s:

As much as the request section got super repetitive with Till Kingdom Come and the like, at 1 in 8 shows they would play something truly unprecedented like AROBTTH, A Message, Swallowed in the Sea, Hypnotised, Life is Beautiful, AICTAIY, Strawberry Swing, See You Soon, the Hardest Part as a FULL BAND. And the AHFOD tour also had the Heroes cover and a few Prince covers! And multiple performances of UATW, and IMP/Don't Panic with Will on vocals. Can't say they didn't try!!!!