MosesTheMarshmallow

Where is this 53 minute number coming from? I can't imagine this being a double album if it's a literal minute shorter than AROBTTH (and quite a bit shorter than X&Y) or 8 minutes faster than the average Coldplay LP. I'll eat my hat if it's really that short.

Which reminds me...we thought AHFOD was going to be a very simple cover that was just a rainbow flower of life on a black background. But that turns out it was the cover without the extra layer of the cover with all the colourful kaleidoscopic collage (which is pretty cool in retrospect, as visually busy as that was). So maybe they'll pull a similar trick with this album cover - maybe this is an insert and the sun and moon are the cover, I hope. Or something we're totally not thinking of!

Hey they managed to mash up Clocks, Fix You, and Up&Up. :lol:

I was hoping for a more simplistic album artwork focused around the sun and the moon in the vein of X&Y or GS...seems like the even-numbered albums have simpler art. :p Also the AHFOD font I've always thought is rather stupid looking. The Ghost Stories font fit really well with its art, and so did VLV. But I remain optimistic!! I wonder what the biggest musical surprise may turn out to be? -VLV title track was pretty surprising with its use of strings -MX had Rihanna -GS had Midnight -AHFOD had Beyonce, Noel Gallagher, Stargate....and XMTS -Kaleidoscope had just all around great songs Some potential surprises?! (and I know I'm not thinking big enough but...) -Jonny goes jazz -Jonny goes banjo -Jonny goes extremely long guitar solo -Will goes accordion (well Life is for Living DID have accordion to be fair) -Something that's super percussive (like Lost or Hymn for the Weekend but more acoustic) -Will singing lead

Besides the usual suspects: -I predict and hope Up&Up will stay in the setlist. -Maybe Violet Hill will return. Part of the fun is thinking about what song they might drop - for example most of AHFOD they did NOT play In My Place and when they did, it was an acoustic request song. For this tour, I predict they might drop ETIAW since ASFOS has a similar energy + Paradise I'd argue is a little more famous, and Everglow, because it's so personal. And of course part of the fun is guessing what back catalogue song will come back. -I'd like to see the Goldrush get played...it's too thematically relevant not to! -Green Eyes, in a full-band context with slide guitar and stuff, for its acoustic style -Life is for Living (Everyday Life!)

I for one quite like the rumoured title of Everyday Life. The sunrise and sunset are part of every day, yet are so beautiful. In the same way that much of Coldplay is about finding happiness in darkness, I feel like this album could be finding beauty in the boring and mundane. If I had to guess about a style, I bet it'll be a bit like Elbow's music, which often takes sort of boring sounding stuff and elevating it in a slightly old-timey orchestral/art rock way but with a particular English melancholy but with a bit of uplift anyways. Speaking of everyday:

Timbaland had a hand in the drums on True Love, which I think are excellent! I know the electronic drums are controversial to some, but for what was meant to be achieved in that song, I think they were perfect. So I'm more confidence in Timbaland than Stargate, who admittedly did contribute to some weird decisions on LP7. That said, I thought Stargate's contributions to the Los Unidades songs are really good!

I wish they would bring back Hurts Like Heaven. I thought AHFOD is a great opener song actually. Square One is so cool with the countdown though. So much to choose from. <3 Agreed that the request thing got kind of stale. So much they could've chosen from. ALSO has anyone attempted to speculate about the file name of the sun-moon image on the Coldplay site? It's referred to as "OG_image" in the source code. What could that mean? Origin? Original gangster? Optical game? ?!?! (It's not letting me upload the file but just view the source code and you'll see what I mean)

1. Wow great job to everyone following all the clues. I feel like the coldplay.com sun and moon have gotten smaller but again, anecdotal. 2. I would love to have Will sing. On The 2nd Law by Muse there are 2 songs sung by Chris (the bassist) instead of Matt, and they are excellent. Will is one in a long line of backup singers who have better singing from a technical perspective than the lead singer (see the Edge vs Bono in U2, Pete Townshend vs Roger Daltrey in the Who to name a couple EDIT: and Liam and Noel Gallagher x100000). I still want a Will song even if his voice is more "boring."

Controversial opinion: most of Oldplay is far more lyrically homogenous compared to new songs. Most of Parachutes through AROBTTH is the same "I love you, I'm sorry" with maybe Clocks, GPASUYF, and a couple of the oddball AROBTTH songs as exceptions (eg title track, A Whisper). Whereas VLV delves into a lot of politics and other storylines, MX is all over the place in an interesting way, GS is slightly more homogenous again, but AHFOD really has a bit of everything! With the exception of Army of One/X Marks the Spot, Jonny has GREAT features on AHFOD. Up&Up's solos (though 1 is Noel Gallagher) are amazing, AHFOD has great guitar lines, and AOAL is built entirely around a Jonny riff. What's not to like in this album from a guitar standpoint!

"See you soon" eh?! Any chance you can PM me the Radiohead tapes? I forgot to download them when they were on Bandcamp. :(

Great finds! AOAL - Will actually is singing the woohoo's in the normal version live too. By the way I LOVE his backing vocals on "If we only have this life..." They just rarely put the camera on him. Love the cowbell...sounds pretty close to the spoons on the album version! Here's another nice stripped version [ugh why can't Chris always play piano on this song...] where you can hear Will sing the "ALIVE AGAIN!" Will always sings the second para in all performances of the song! (There are some Chris or Chris+Jonny only performances where he only sings the first para).

It's a pretty interesting acoustic guitar part. It sounds like what Jonny plays live for Charlie Brown. But mostly it just sounds like this funny little droning thing that oddly fits in the song well.

Finally listened to the whole EP and I like it! Voodoo is a great feels-like-it's-by-Coldplay song with some great Jonny riffs. Timbuktu is very catchy. Rise Up is cool, with a nice guitar line - maybe that was Jonny? I don't know how I feel about Nelson Mandela's voice being used that way, but I get someone probably okay-ed that and that it's all well meaning. *shrug* Btw! E-Lo is pretty good live!! Chris and Pharrell are a little sloppy but it looks like they're having fun. The drums and guitars and stuff feel more present too, though the piano at the end is not as prominent which I think is important in the album version.

Chainsmokers might be controversial, but I have to say that either they influenced the scene or they are emblematic of artists who came before them, and that all resulted in songs like SJLT but also this song by Bastille while I like a lot: Marshmello & Bastille - Happier (Live on Ellen) - YouTube

Indeed it's hard to hear Jonny when Will sings so powerfully, oops. And Jonny is singing the octave below Chris so it's way harder to pick out. You can hear him clearly on this recording though: Parachutes era: Will is carrying the whole second half of Everything's Not Lost Will also has some nice vocals in this version of Yellow (as well as all versions) but particularly listen during the second chorus. :)

Will has some great vocals on all of Ghost Stories... Ink "ft Rihanna" While I LOVE Will's backing vocals on Magic (the cool layering in the choruses is just so CLEVER), it's also one of FEW examples out there where you can hear him make some singing mistakes. Oh and remember when he played lead guitar whilst singing beautiful vocals?! Also I remembered there was this version of Fix You out there, which is a true testament to Will's outrageous ability to sound exactly like the studio versions of things (and this is a stripped down performance so 0% chance that it's on a backing track). Also note how Jonny sings and lazy ol' Guy doesn't. :p

Bugger...any chance you can bring this to the US?!

Just found out what that one bit of E-Lo is!! Nice sample/homage! It's Mother Miriam! :)

I'm happy to give some feedback! I'm in America and write/perform music too!

I quite like the song, but I like the video even more!!!!!!!!!!! The lyrics are very meaningful, and per Miracles (someone special) style and AOAL, there's a lot of good references that I haven't yet fully understood but indeed sounds like they may be about Apartheid and such. I do wish there was more guitar though, as I often do. :) I bet when they play this live there'll be this giant Jonny guitar solo we didn't notice on the album version because it's not mixed loudly enough.... :p

^The band has a bad habit of toning down Will's vocals on album versions. :( UATW is particularly the case for that. Here's an obscure find - the 2010 version of A Message with some excellent Will vocals (also extremely crunchy Jonny guitar lines)

I love Will vocals and have many many things to say about them. Here's something I found just now when I looked up to see if there are any stripped versions of Fix You (that aren't Chris and Jonny only). This appears to be one of those files of extra bits to songs (see also in the "what does Jonny do on Viva la Vida" thread for all the little guitar bits he does). Some great Will vocals, and a bit of Jonny/Guy too! Also here's a nice version of Fix You where thanks to Chris's shenanigans, we can hear everyone else's vocals really well:

Wonderful interview and now I am craving B-sides. :(

I believe he's alluding to the very end, where the strings do this chromatic (note-by-note) ascending thing, which is pretty unusual. In fact, it's the exact kind of thing someone would come up with if they can't read music because if you don't know what you're doing sometimes all you can do is go to the next note on the piano. GPASUYF is the same sort of chromatic thing, except instead it's descending instead of ascending. Or Guy came up with it. :p