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Alright, I'm still doing retrospectives right now, but I'm really close to catching up to where I was when I started writing this project as a blog. I'm honestly itching to move on to new stuff, and these last two days have a lot of repeat content so forgive me if I don't take it as seriously as my previous few posts. Sometime in 2003, so the year after they released AROBTTH, they released a random single called "Murder". Yep that's the name of the song. Having listened to it, it doesn't really stand out too much. Style-wise it fits 100% into AROBTTH, could easily just be a song from the album, except it isn't on the album. I don't really have anything to say about this song, except that I like how the single cover seems like they just committed or witnessed murder (or I guess I don't like it, I can't really say I like that it looks like they committed murder can I?) Next, on March 24, 2003, they released Clocks as an official single. I...

Hey Coldplayers! ( Apparently that's the official fanbase nickname for Coldplay...) Today I'm going to be going over Coldplay's second full length album: A Rush of Blood to the Head. And get excited, because for a lot of people, this is the last good thing Coldplay put out. These all come from this  article, which by itself is really a perfect encapsulation of the phenomenon of Coldplay Hate. That someone had to write a whole article to justify their enjoyment of a musical artist, and not even for anything controversial that the artist did, but simply because it was so socially unacceptable to like them. So gear up because after this it's only downhill from here haha. In all seriousness though, I think this phenomenon says more about a certain time and place than it does about Coldplay themselves. While I don't have much personal familiarity with British culture, I would say that maybe British people tend to prefer a bit of cynicism and edginess to their humor, cul...

Well  I got six new songs for you guys today. On August 5, 2002, around eight months after releasing their last song, Coldplay returned with a bang, releasing hit single In My Place, along with the B-sides One I Love, and I Bloom Blaum (what?). As an aside, I realize now that B-side is the term for all those extra songs that are released along with the main singles, like how in my last post I talked about how the singles Trouble and Don't Panic had other songs accompanying their releases. B-side (as opposed to A-side), was the term that referred to the back side of the cassette or record (vinyl), while the A-side contained the headline song or songs, the B-side usually contained songs not necessarily intended to " receive attention ". The existence of B-side songs was thus a product of convenience: There's extra space on the physical medium used to record songs so something might as well be put there. In another previous post I talked a bit about my feeling that band...

Source:  Billboard   Starting off this post with a nice little picture of the band. Man look at those cute little guys! This photo was apparently taken sometime around the year 2000, the same year Parachutes was released, and the year of their first concert tour ( Wikipedia ). Chris Martin was 23 that year! Of course this isn't incredibly young for a musical artist, but it still really puts their music into perspective, knowing they were all in their early 20s (or maybe late-teens) when they wrote these early songs. Just for fun here's a comparison of him then and now, he's definitely a bit more grizzled, but he still looks young. The success that Coldplay had already achieved by this point in their careers is actually pretty incredible. Parachutes went #1 in the UK, won British Album of the Year at the Brit Awards, and also won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album. Their success though, was accompanied by the beginning of Coldplay Hate. Coldplay Hate (my own term), ...

Alright y'all we're back in business. It's been a little while since I continued this project, but here we are. Today, I'm gonna be talking about my first time listening through Parachutes, the first full-length album by Coldplay. Unfortunately, it's going on 3 months since I first listened to this originally, and honestly, I don't think I have too much to say. But Parachutes came out on July 10, 2000, about 24 and a half years ago now. It was basically an instant hit, possibly boosted by the success of the single Yellow. This Wikipedia chart does a good job showing the legacy of this album. It's considered (by many, at least), one of the better albums in recent history. I honestly couldn't say why it's so highly rated. I think the album is okay. The songs mostly follow the typical early Coldplay style I've talked about a few times, slow and thoughtful. They're nice songs, don't get me wrong, Spies and Don't Panic are atmospheric, Shi...

The next few songs are the true beginning of the Parachutes era for Coldplay. They released Shiver, along with a couple other songs which don't appear on the album, on March 6, 2000, a few months before Parachutes. This practice of releasing non-album songs along with their singles is something we don't really see these days (at least that I can think of). I have no actual evidence for this, but it feels like bands back in the day would record songs much more often and just release them, even if they weren't perfectly crafted, or their absolute best work. These days it feels like artists have to make sure each song they release fits correctly into their brand and album "era." My uneducated guess would be this has something to do with the digital/streaming age and how maintaining brand purity and reputation is almost as important as your actual music quality. And of course we have You-Know-Who to thank for the explosion of popularity in the word "era." ht...