lennyrott1

It's anyones guess at this point. They often are changing plans based on tours and if they change their minds. I think there are a few possibilities: "Stars" will be the subtitle of the MOTS Live Album. "Stars" will be in the title of an EP of B-sides since 2020 and be considered Volume 3. "Stars" will be in the next album, which will be the musical and somehow still wrapped into the MOTS theme.

"Golden" Era may be yet to come if we define it as when they guys are still recording music and very old. 😅 I agree most folks would say their early career at consistent quality, classy sounds, and timeless vibes and easily could be considered when the band was at their best. For me personally though, the "Golden Era" or "Peak" era of the band was defintely the Eno albums, VLV & MX. VLV is one of their best sounding albums and really pushed their limits on creativity. In terms of sheer "rock and roll," we have incredible guitar solos across both records and explosive moments that instantly impressed in live settings. MX's overall quality and songwriting might be more mixed, but I think it's an interesting companion piece to Viva since it upped the pop appeal signficantly. In many ways, it's the bridge era from their older alt rock sound to their modern pop sound. Without Viva, we likely wouldn't have seen the band continue using amazing string sections. Without MX, we wouldn't see the interesting collaborations and increased use of drum machines and synthesizers. Lyrically they are also the only albums (save Everyday Life later on) that mostly tried telling stories and use heavy metaphors. Their first three albums are mostly love songs or about personal anxieties. Ghost Stories and AHFOD are also mostly love albums. MOTS and now Moon Music are even more vague, somehow, but are basically "love for humanity" albums. Of course, I'm biased because these two records really painted my musical taste when I was a teenager and discovering new music. But when I go back and listen to their discography, I do think these albums are objectivelly more cinematic, exciting and consistent than their most recent work and the staying power of MX in the live shows and VLV in the fan's hearts I think demonstrates this.

I like this. At this point it feels like MOTS 3 should just be a straight up surprise drop and even if that's an EP containing all the b-sides since 2020 I'd be happy with that. But I don't know what to think anymore given the rumored musical.

I actually think Lady Gaga just did this with the release of an additional song on her recent album. It could be fun. Coldplay doesn't seem to like going back and changing their original vision but in the MOTS era I'd be all for it given I don't think the albums are all that terrific.

If only. I'm not sure if that'll ever come to fruition. Coldplay might be able to sell out stadiums now by promising all of the greatest hits and Tik-Tok/Instagram moments everyone wants, with the fireworks and lights. I saw them in Denver last month and even more than the AHFOD tour so much of the experience is about the visuals over the music. But if they toured a massively deep-cut, more musically impressive "Eras" tour, you'd have to wonder whether they would sell out a stadium. Til Kingdom Come, Strawberry Swing, COTW, DAAHF are some of my favorite songs of all time, but they don't lend themselves to the style of concert they've been doing for the last 15 years. Also... it's time consuming. They have 10 albums and to hit a deep cut on each album automatically takes up about an hour of concert time. I didn't have the good luck of seeing Taylor's Era's tour, but I think most artists are going to have a hard time holding the attention of an audience for 3 hours unless the fan base is really, really hardcore. Maybe I'm underestimating Coldplayers, but based on the Denver show I was surrounded by people who just liked ASFOS and were there to take photos vs actually be there for the musical experience.

They are just out there performing my dream concert in the soundchecks lol

Thought I'd drop a quick review from the Denver show with a spoiler tag for those wanting to go in clean. My opinion is probably tainted a bit becuase unfortunately I was extremely busy the week before and got a really sore throat and canker sores so I coudln't really sing along or dance purely because of my low energy. It was also my first show in the GA section standing between the B and C stage and taken together with the openers and a thunderstorm delay, I was standing for basically 5 hours straight before I left so yeah, overall very exhausting experience. I was really pleased with how Moon Music songs sounded and loved the inclusion of some intimate oldies but I was really, really disappointed by the crowd in GA and how much people film everything and basically make it impossible to see. The newer music clearly isn't keeping up with the classics at this point and the tension between old, alternative and raw sounding instruments is clashing even more with the news songs since AHFOD that are more synth driven. For that reason, I think this tour feels the least seamless and has the least musical fidelity. But the overall experience is still unforgettable -- the xylobands, the huge moments with lasers, fireworks and confetti. And the lighclub and puppet sections added some "WTF" parts that I think were entertaining and you cant walk away not having had a good time.

I 100% agree with all of this. I feel like we all get swept up in the hype of iAAM because finally we had Jonny and Chris's piano syncopated together again, the type of instrumentation that often made Viva so incredible. But the final mix is produced more like a pop song than an actual rock song. But on the more positive side -- sometimes that pop production isn't so bad. I think Good Feelings sounds pretty fresh and fun, a lot of the instrumental details come through nicely.

The mixing is def inconsistent. I'm not sure if its the final mix working with Max Martin and his crew, but it's very popified Sometimes pretty compressed, other times the bass and guitar are super drowned out. MOTS had it bad too. I don't know how they downgraded so much after the really excellent mixing on Everyday Life. This Man in the Moon remaster is sounding awesome.

I'm generalizing of course. There's been plenty of great Jonny moments where he's sounded like other musicians, such as on Up&Up (Oasis) or Coloratura (David Gilmour). I'd say its not necessarily the guitar tone but the execution of how is guitar is utilized as more of a texture and backdrop to the larger song and less of a stand out instrument driving the melody. I think X&Y and Viva are arguably their most guitar-forward albums, but after that we started seeing the "Big" tracks like ASFOS, Army of One, SJLT, Higher Power, MU, FLIFL, We Pray where's really just a backdrop. Even on Everyday Life he sounds more like The Edge than ever on Trouble in Town.

Generally I agree Jonny's guitar since Viva is way more Edge-like, but it does bother me he's missing. Every recent single: Higher Power, MU, We Pray, Let Somebody Go, FLIFL stand out to me as songs that are mid to fine, but they could have been great if they had a more prominent guitar moment. Like on Moon Music we basically have two really great guitar moments: IAAM solo and All My Love solo. On MOTS, we get the amazing solo on Coloratura but everything else is incredibly mid. During the tour I loved when they had HER do a solo on LSG, it elevated the song from boring 80's cheese to fun 80's cheese. Pretty much every guitar cover of Higher Power on YouTube has a cooler riff imitating the melody. I will say Guy has largely been a trade-off in this, though. I like his bass for a lot of the MOTS era. But why not have those great bass moments AND guitar? That is what a four-piece band is supposed to sound like after all. It doesn't have to be every song but at least on half of the songs would be nice.

Famous Old Painters? Idk. I won't yuck other people's yum but I think the new verse sounds pretty awful. His voice is produced different, the instrumentation doesn't really transition well and the lyrics are nonsensical and have a different tone than the rest of the song.

LP11 is really gonna be make or break for me. I like Moon Music a lot, it's a relaxing pleasant listen, but it really hasn't aged that well. Not commercially or critically successful and while the tour is doing great, it seems fans are mostly there for the greatest hits at this point. If LP11 is just another Max Martin record with this kind of airy, minimalistic pop approach then I think they're really going to lose a lot of the fan base they established in the 2010's and the fact it's a musical feels all the more risky. One the one hand, if the music ends up being really good (maybe a few hit singles) and the musical is thoughtfully done, I could see some people saying "okay fine Coldplay has impressive longevity" and maybe in this cynical world people will like the charm of it. On the other hand, if it's bad lyrics, corny production, not catchy music, then I fear it will make them a really, really easy punching bag and maybe even the final nail in the coffin for folks who were holding on through the better parts of Moon Music.

Honestly I love the idea of We Pray being this featuring song that gets a new verse for every concert with guest artists. It's a really good idea and it's awesome that by the end of it they'll have a version of the song in like 5+ different languages. That said... it would also be great if We Pray was just a better song. It's not bad, it has a good beat, it's pretty catchy. But like the rest of Moon Music it doesn't have that extra oomph to make it stick. Maybe a Jonny guitar solo, maybe a moment in the song with more of an instrumental breakdown. It's just too generic and straightforward.

Totally! That nostalgia definitely hits me. Viva & X&Y were so important to me during formative years, and I have to wonder if newer albums have the same affect on the younger generation or if the age of streaming has done away with that level of singular fandom. And generally yeah I feel ike there was this burst of creative spirit on MX with a huge leap towards mainstreamism and looking back, it should have been obvious they weren't going to release experimental rock after collaborating with Rihanna. But on the other hand, as a huge fan of Radiohead and some of the side projects (like The Smile) I can at least acknowledge Coldplay delving into a bunch of random genres is creative in a way, given Thom Yorke has been making virtualy the same exact music for the past 10+ years. And for the concert, we'll see! If I don't, I plan on selling them face value so someone else can experience them. The main reason I bought them is (god bless Coldplay) the prices were super reasonable for good seats and there wasn't any price fluctuations. I saw them in 2016 and it was awesome but the setlist is largely the same now minus some of the C-stage oldies they did on that tour.

Good to hear from you on this, nvdmm. I do think your last point rings espescially true for me, even though I generally like Moon Music as an album and think most of the songs are solid enough. Thre's really no incentive for them to change their formula very much and at this point it feels like they are either just doing general modern pop music or rehashing sounds from earlier in their career to less success. What I find perplexing about MM is in the inconsistency of sound and I think this continues to be the biggest issue they've had since 2015. Chris just wants to be the best at everything and so the albums feel sonically inconsistent. Moon Music definitely fairs better than MOTS though, but that's a pretty low bar to jump. These feel more like Coldplay playlists than albums, in my opinion and Everyday Life was borderline there too. If you take Moon Music, Alien Hits/Alien Radio, One World and A Wave, you have a Coldplay album that is chanelling Sigur Ros, balancing sadness hope and beauty with orchestral transitions and distorted guitars. I wish the album was just 42 minutes of those sounds. But then Good Feelings, Aeterna, Man in the Moon and FLIFIL, you have a straight pop and dance album . AML, Karate Kid and iAAM are classic Coldplay, which is great to hear but I'd rather listen to the old stuff. We Pray is collab Coldplay and Jupiter is acoustic/indie Coldplay. The production value song to song varies wildly. It is clear they recorded it across the world and there isn't that live recording, organic sound for most of the album. But I genuinely do think the album has a great self-help vibe for pop music and it tells a sort of arc about overcoming challenges and embracing love, in the vaguest sense. I've listened to it a lot and I think it's a 7-8/10 for me as a fan. Overall, I'm kind of hoping the MOTS Era Wraps up soon and they get back to more focused records that feel more down to earth. I have tickets to a show in June I may not be able to actually attend, and I find myself a bit "meh" anyways because the setlist was so similar to the last tour and I'm not dying to see POTP or Higher Power, honestly. If they end up inserting songs like Man in the Moon, Humankind, One World, Aeterna or iAAM I'd be way more motivated to go, I just don't see that happening.

I'm not sure if we'll get them anymore but I could see them potentially releasing another EP with some of the leftovers from the last two eras and call it Volume 3 -- basically all the b-sides of MOTS. But MOTS 3 seems to be the music film so I may be wrong.

Overall this is pretty awesome. We got basically one of their coolest music videos ever and it's the length of the entire album. Some of the moments are really impactful. One World, Rainbow and Moon Music are really gorgeous espescially but I also love the animation on FLIFL and Jupiter. Top notch. Truly some memorable animations and really cool trippy moments that match the music really well. We Pray also has some powerful imagery but was very disappointed that A.I. was used. I guess you can argue it's like any other art medium that's up for interpretation but it's also the first time in history people are making art using a high-powered robot that steals other people's work. I'm pretty sure there's a shot of Native Americans and Muslim women praying that are A.I. generated and for me, that's in really, really poor taste.

Taylor Swift dropped a full album and then an entire second album set of b-sides while being on tour, Charli XCX dropped a full album and then a full remix album that drastically changed the existing songs, Post Malone's album had an extended version that was nearly twice as long, Metro Boomin put out two related albums back to back, The Smile dropped two albums. I'm not necessarily saying I expect Coldplay to drop another 10 brand new songs, I'm very happy with the three we got. However, I think it's the fact that Moon Music teased so many other songs (Opus 5, 2 Aliens, another version of FLIFL, more of the Rainbow Suite). Those took up space and time in Moon Music, and I think it contributes to some critique of the record that they're trying to pack so many ideas into a short run time. If they just released all of those songs seperately, then we'd be able to enjoy them on their own merits. We'll see if that happens!

Eh we'll see but if the Christmas Moon Edition is just literally Christmas Lights then I'm starting to feel like this is Coldplay's most cynical era in terms of sheer marketing. Full Moon was fun and gave us some new tracks, but it was nothing close to what you'd expect from most other major artists. Plus they made the CD dirt cheap on Amazon and Target to boost sales, it's very clear that their record label had a strategy to get them to #1. But releasing a Christmas Edition that's literally not different at all would be completely absurd and depressing, especially coupled with a song that's 14 years old. We know (from recent leaks) that they have a huge backlog of great b-sides -- at least make our streaming and purchasing time worth it.

Moon Music really hasn't broke my rankings in any meaningful way. It's a good album, but I feel after repeated listens that it still suffers from a lack of cohesion and has too many idea jam-packed into it. Clearly there was so much material and you can tell the band had a tough time consolidating it to under 45 minutes. And I do think the singles were really weak. We Pray didn't hold up very well for me and FLIFL is still a pretty big bore. The b-sides help improve the overall era though. Relative scores below, really could be a tossup for me on any given day. 1. Viva - 10/10 2. AROBTTH - 9.5/10 3. Parachutes - 9/10 4. Everyday Life - 8.5/10 5. X&Y - 8.5/10 6. Mylo Xyloto - 8/10 7. AHFOD - 7.5/10 8. Moon Music -7.5/10 9. Ghost Stories - 7.5/10 10. MOTS - 6.5/10

It is weird that 2 Aliens got the OG "Arabesque" treatment, espescially since the demo version featured a nice verse from SZA. Still clinging to hope that one day we get a big release of demos which may include those collaborations. Or it's possible Coldplay this time around is teasing us about MOTS Vol. 3, which could be a b-sides release featuring Rainbow tracks, 2 Aliens, Earthling (PLEASE!!!), The Only One, UFO II.

Moon Music was WAY more effectively marketed than the last two albums in my opinion. I got a ton of targeted ads on virtually every online/social media platform and on top of that you have had a surge of popularity recently for Yellow and Sparks helping get them some algorithm help on streaming services. So I think Coldplay well-timed the release through the organic news of the tour plus an enormous advertising budget that helped push them over the edge. This band probably has unlimted money for advertising so it's hard to tell whether they made their money back. Plus there's other intangibles: The artwork is their best since AHFOD, people seem to like the music a bit better, there's possibly less competition as the enthusiasm for Sabrina and Chappell wears off.

I'm not usually a big fan of re-doing tracklisting but since the MOTS Era now has two albums and finally some b-sides, I'm going to go ahead and see if I can make MOTS & Moon Music better albums for me. I want to use some of the other leaked songs but won't until they are released. I wish MOTS committed 100% to the over the top fun pop vibes. I think adding Good Feelings and Aeterna to that album adds not only needed instrumentation from Jonny and Guy, but it brings more of a spacey-dance vibe to the whole album. It would arguably be the best bass album for Coldplay and cut some of the most boring and laborous parts. To balance out the pop, Karate Kid and Coloratura deliver the beautiful classic rock and piano influence of Pink Floyd and Elton John. Meanwhile, Moon Music could serve as a more indie/pop and classic Coldplay album. Man in the Moon and The Astronaut would deliver some 80's flair and fun similar to MOTS but be helped by the more organic sounds of Jupter and FLIFL. The rest of the album would largely stay the same and be strengthened by the orchestral and serious sounding songs: Moon Music, One World, Angel Song, Neon Forest. I really like We Pray and Biutyful but they just don't serve their albums very well. LSG and Infinity Sign are b-side quality.

Congrats Famous Old Painter on your new adventure! Yeah I think this is a really good album though of course it's not perfect. I don't really care about other people's opinions and tastes, but it has been interesting that this album is pretty critically divisive just like MOTS. Most reviews I've read & seen on YouTube fascinate me because generally nobody has anything bad to say. In fact reviews from the Gaurdian and Pitchfork, which both gave a 6/10 review, basically praised the album and talked about how good the songs and production often are only to give it a middling score. Meanwhile, Taylor's most recent album which was a massive bore with some of her most cringe lyrics sits at 76 on metacritic (and I say this as someone who likes her music). I hate to say it, but it feels like people are still trapped in this mindset that Coldplay just needs release Parachutes 2.0 or that because Chris Martin is focusing on lyrics about trying to love mankind it's somehow immature or not deep enough. They are often judged like either a bad pop act or a bad rock act but not as their own thing. Again, people can have their own tastes but at some point criticism needs to actually make valid points.