lennyrott1

This is a spoiler, there are some posts about it in the leaks thread but don't click in case this ends up being the final version of good feelings, which is not confirmed. But wrapping up non-spoiler, I think as folks can imagine the concern is that Moon Music will have a bunch of mellow, ambient, softer sounding songs (like All My Love, FLIFIL) and then all of a sudden this Saturday Night Live ready party banger.

Yeah if I'm the band and thinking about advertising the album but also sharing with fans the breadth of your album, I think Good Feelings will be the next single to garner a ton of attention and radio play. If you can advertise Nile Rogers, that's huge. Then, a release like We Pray might get more attention from alternative press, fans of Simz and Burna Boy, and folks who like the darker Coldplay. I could see All My Love being a single after the album comes out, maybe similar to how they dropped Let Somebody Go a the last single for the MOTS era. I will say this though -- if Good Feelings is the only song on the album with that style, it's disappointing the band isn't using Nile Rogers more. Sure, maybe some of the songs they did with him will come out later. But if you're working with a legend like him, you'd hope for an album that has many features. It almost makes me wish we get the Moon Music album as something that's kind of lowkey and ambient and then they drop Moon Music Dance Version EP or something with like 6 Nile Rogers tracks.

I mean the first half feels real to me.... the second half however sounds like it was recorded entirely with synths. It would be a departure from the live version we've already heard, and a really crappy departure in my opinon. The "ommm" and strings of the live version were incredible. To cut that out for synths would be a massive let down. Maybe this was the pre strings and pre crowd noise version. I guess we'll see.

We Pray, Violet Hill & Arabesque all together was the best part of the show, in my opinion. I think We Pray is very good. That all said, I do not love the overall MOTS setlist given they're retreading so many songs from the AHFOD tour. My biggest wish, and I doubt this will change, is that their setlist was just 15-20 minutes longer so there's enough time for another C-Stage deep cut and maybe one or two more deeper cuts that switch out every few nights. I wanted to buy a ticket for this tour but the setlists are sometimes so varied, for the high price I'd be bummed to get less total songs. Like during the AHFOD tour I got to see them do a Trouble, God Put a Smile and then Green Eyes on the c-stage and it was incredible.

I'm not sure if I agree but I definitely share the concern given they've done a lot of mishmash sounds since Everyday Life. FLIFIL is a very basic Coldplay pop song and All My Love seems like a pretty basic Coldplay ballad. Those two seem to fit on an album together. I think We Pray works as the more "serious" song on the album because it still features contributions from the full band and has some nice strings. The opener Forever Held could be the Moon Music opening song and we know One World will also include strings, so I'm thinking maybe the record is really string and ambient leaning, lovely more chill pop songs with the occasional song that maybe goes in a different direction for a few moments -- Good Feelings, We Pray, maybe on more rockier song. Overall I remain optimistic about Moon Music following Glasto. My favorite bit was the Marten Garrex Cover and I honestly wouldn't be upset if that was a transition track on Moon Music.

Agree. It's got to be Good Feelings given it's likely to be the most catchy and successful song on the album, I would guess. I do keep wondering about Jupiter. Chris really played it up and there was so much hype behind it being the lead single featuring Camilla Caballo but now I have no clue. I'm also surprised a more full version didn't leak.

The ending is the best part, but I don't want to listen to a song just to wait for the ending. But honestly not a big deal! It's just my opinion. Maybe I'll like it more in the future and I'm actually expecting to like it more in the context of the album.

Couldn't agree more with some of the Viva-stan crew here. I've felt this way since MOTS but the simplicity in the production style ends up making parts of songs feel empty. To a casual listener, it may not matter. But for those of us who love the more full sounding Coldplay, it often feels like a huge missed opportunity on the bridges and outros. And I could be wrong, but I almost feel like the band would have more commercial success too. Coldplay has had hit singles with guitar solos, with horn sections etc. WHen a song is kind of sucked dry of what makes it exciting, a catchy chorus still isn't going to save it. I love pop music and what Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Billie and Finneas and even what Harry Styles has done recently just sounds more rich and interesting in my opinion, on top of the incredble hooks.

Someone probably already said this but I'm starting to wonder if we're getting an partially b-side EP this summer similar to the ETIAW single. It could be 1.FLIFL 2. I Am A Mountain 3. Aeterna 4. FLIFL Pt. 2 It would be a nice way to give fans some more music before the album drops in October and presumably bigger singles like Good Feelings try to steal the radiowaves.

Following the single I don't see how Moon Music is going to sound drastically different than MOTS but I hope I am wrong. With Newplay, even if I don't entirely vibe with all the songs, I can at least acknowledge the production and style are unique to each era. The fact they have allegedly put so much money and time behind Moon Music which may only be 10 tracks is interesting to me especially because they are still working with Max Martin and it's been a pretty normal album gap of 2021-2024. It sets an expectation that they are cooking something different only to drop a song with fairly similar production to their last album. FLIFL does have a certain airy-ness and softness to it that makes me think this album could be like Ghost Stories, but as a single it feels like a very safe tease. It could be the only song on the album with this feel and I do think it could mean the album has many alt tracks which is exciting.

I'm still cautiously optimistc after this first single. I'm not a huge fan of the production and mixing again and I'm worried that the Max Martin-ism's of MOTS are going to continue based on this track. BUT -- there's clearly some intention on FLIFL of more intstrumention, a mellow vibe. I think there's going to be a lot of good stuff in store and the sounds of We Pray so far sound amazing, so I think it could overall be an improvement on the last album for me but I'm having a very "meh" reaction to FLIFL right now.

I think it's a solid song but on first listen it didn't really grab my attention and keep it. I don't know what exactly it is, but Chris' songwriting style from MOTS is continuing to let me down a bit. Overall I think it's like a 6/10 for me. The Good: The guitar is more audible than many songs on MOTS. The build up at the last 45 seconds or so is pretty nice, good strings, interesting ambient sounds. There's some nice details in the mix as well, some xylophones, some shimmering harp chords. It's nice to hear the e-bow make a return. The chorus is undeniably catchy but very similar to Higher Power. The Bad: I really don't like the production, again, Max Martin and this band don't mix well in my opinion. I've now listend on headphones and a speaker and just didn't care for it. The bass is turned up to loud, it feels messy at times like they were frantically trying to make sure you'd hear the acoustic guitar, but no wait! There's strings too! And why not let's turn up the electric guitar a little to get that in there too but then immediately mute it and throw in a little random bass lick from Guy with the strings. If this song was actually mixed and performed like a classic Coldplay song, it's a great listen for me. But this lowkey production and basic drum loop makes this song sound like it was clearly recorded in seperate studios and patched together. Then lyrically, there's really nothing there. It's just the same old platitudes Chris has been singing about since 2014. That's my opinion. Maybe it will grow on me.

Our first taste of artwork, presumably! Not sure if I love it but we'll see what the final stuff looks like. It's kind of anti-MOTS in that the blue is opposite, instead of a lot of weird detailed planets is a blurry moon, instead of emojis the song title is long and crammed together. It kind of reminds me of a post-rock album cover you'd get in the 2010's, which feels aged to me but it is pretty and has that grainy feel to it. I guess we'll see!

I love Little Simz, I think one of the best rappers in the game right now. I could see we pray being the song that surprises us the most for how good it is -- it sounds ambitious in the way Arabesque did.

I think cautious optimism warranted for a few reasons, some of which I'll put in spoilers in case people are avoiding leaks. But overall I'm definitely taking the optimism side. For one, we know they tend to follow up their big tour pop albums (MOTS) with more down-to-earth albums, so we're expecting Moon Music to be more organic sounding and the teasers thus far are pointing to that (FLIFIL, All My Love, One World). Second, Phil is saying it's their "best album," in his opinion, and closest to Viva La Vida, which is my personal favorite and I know a fan favorite & most critically acclaimed. Given Phil loves VLV and even X&Y, I like his opinions generally (and yes, Biutyful is one of my favorites on MOTS like him). TBH, I'm kind of struck that Phil seems to be responding to criticism of MOTS, as if he or maybe even the band acknowledges that it wasn't super well recieved. It's not really like them to say they regret an album and certainly they haven't implied they think the record is bad or anything, but Phil responded to a fan about the metacritic score and is really hyping Moon Music, which he didn't do for MOTS. But, here's my cautious part:

Very promising tease. FLIFIL feels like the heart of MOTS combined with better production and more intstruments, so basically in many ways like Mylo Xyloto. Jonny's guitar tone sounds a bit like the X&Y era to me. Promising start, but as ever one has to wonder if they are teasing this era with the Oldplay vibe to start but then future singles will be very pop produced later on.

The leak crapshow continues. I tend to agree with the general sentiment that leaks are bittersweet. You get to hear incredible potential for eras that ended up being weaker but then, we still get the special privilege of hearing those songs and adding them to our "head canon" of these eras. Some of my general takeaways with spoilers.

The rainbow is probably some sort of reference to Dark Side of the Moon but also could be a pride thing.

Best post on this thread so far. Facts.

Either there's a coordinated leak of tracklist and old demos meant to mislead us or there's more details to this album out there than we know.

I mean... Idk. We could get a single tomorrow or potentially next Friday. Anytime if they want to just jump into the new era! I think we can all feel we're close.

WTF okay fellas. Yeah these tracklist feels very fake to me just because baically every track has already been rumored and I find it hard to believe the final tracklist won't have some random songs that have never been mentioned or teased. Like I'm pretty sure there's never been a single moment in speculation history that somebody leaked an entire tracklist this early. That said, kudos to whoever put it together. Sounds like a good album, I hope it's true.

Just listened thru the podcast series which was frankly a bit of a slog given it was largely re-used interview materials that hardcore fans like us have already heard over the decades. Also just in terms of overall outline of the podcast, it was all over the place and they repeated clips from interviews. Lazy. Nothing really that edgy or exciting about potential next steps. I'll say at a couple points, the background music felt like there was some stock music sounding a bit like it could be a Coldplay song but idk. Someone would need to strip out the interview audio so we can only hear the background music and do a check.

I think it's gotta be Good Feelings. It is a clear summery pop song that could break into Top 40. Or they could start with a single more for the fans and release a deeper cut (like when they premiered Midnight, for example).

I also kind of like the shorter Church. For Cry Cry Cry, I personally just am not a fan of this style of music but I actually prefer Angel Moon just because it adds an extra layer. When they performed it for NPR with the LOVE Choir, that was a game changer. Much better with group vocals and I wish that made it to the final recording, it would have given the LOVE Choir a nice feature on both Sunrise and Sunset.