Coldplay: Day 13

So I finished up the last of A Rush of Blood to the Head era with another Christmas song: 2000 miles. I did not realize Coldplay had so many Christmas songs in their catalog. I remember listening to Christmas Lights a lot on my mission, but that was the only one I knew. This one was pretty nice though. A relaxing piano, and some lyrics that appear to be vaguely about a loved one being far away (or maybe being far away from loved ones) at Christmas time. I notice the song includes the line "It felt like Christmas time" at the end of the song. Christmas Lights (which I haven't gotten to yet on this endeavor, but I remember pretty well), has the line "Doesn't really feel like Christmas at all." It seems like Chris Martin has some kind of interest in the feeling of Christmas, and whether or not the Christmas season lives up to that idea we have in our heads of what it feels like. Anyways, that concludes the AROBTTH era and I started up right away on their third era: The X&Y era. The first Spotify entry here is Speed of Sound - Live, released on May 20, 2005.

Looking at the album art for this single, we see the beginning of the distinctive X&Y style, the checkered, different colored boxes arranged in bizarre patterns. The bright colors of this art seem to fit well with the upbeat, energetic song that is Speed of Sound, especially compared to the slow-moving, pensive songs and grey-white color scheme of AROBTTH. Speed of Sound is a Coldplay song I know quite well. Way back in my early teen years, this was my favorite Coldplay song. There was no real reason why it was my favorite, I just liked how it sounded. Listening to the live performance I started thinking about this interview I read recently (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/chris-martin-coldplay-songs-stories-1235113494/fix-you-2005-1235113511/) where he says that the album X&Y came during a really difficult period for the band, and he feels the album is a bit of a mess where nothing went right. It will be interesting to listen to the music from this period with this in mind. Overall though, I still really like Speed of Sound. The piano melody is awesome, and the imagery of birds, mountains, planets, and cities is captivating.


Songs listened to

2000 Miles - December 2, 2003

"Speed of Sound - Live" - May 20, 2005

Speed of Sound - May 23, 2005

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coldplay: Day 12

Image
July 8, 2025. Live 2003 was Coldplay's first "live" album release (they released a live EP a couple years before). Released in November 2003, this album contains the complete recording of a concert they gave in Sydney, Australia (apparently it contains material from two different shows on consecutive nights, more on that later). I think live albums are kind of annoying in general because it's just a bunch of extra content that isn't really providing anything new. I'm not sure exactly why artists release live albums, I guess it's just a matter of preference with some people liking them and some not. A couple things  they can provide are alternative listening experiences, or just other methods to sell more records/get more streams. The album itself is about 50% songs from AROBTTH, 25% songs from Parachutes, and 25% other songs. Concerts are usually structured this way with the latest album taking up a disproportionally large share of the songs and then popu...
Read more

Coldplay: Day 8

Image
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), ...
Read more