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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...

Today I started in earnest on the X&Y album, and listened to a single that was released with Speed of Sound but not included on the album. I only listened to these two songs, the single, Things I Don't Understand, and Square One, the first song off X&Y, and they didn't leave much of an impression on me. After Speed of Sound, which felt like a revolution in their style, these two songs return to the slow, gentle electric guitar and plaintive Chris Martin crooning that characterized A Rush of Blood to the Head and even Parachutes, somewhat. Although those two will probably not become favorites, I will say that they aren't unenjoyable to listen to. Even the standard-fare Coldplay songs still bring a pleasing sort of background music atmosphere that while not particularly compelling, doesn't hurt your ears.

     So if you are reading this, you probably at least saw that the entry before is titled "Coldplay: Day 13," which doesn't make a lot of sense. I decided a month or so ago that I wanted to go through and listen to the entire music catalog of Coldplay (as found on Spotify), in order. Despite being a fan of Coldplay for around 12-13 years now (about half my life), I realized that I still have never listened to a good chunk of their music. So I began this project a little while ago, and then a few days ago when I was working on this (i.e. listening to music), I realized that I wanted to document this journey a little bit, and so decided to write a blog. So I did my first write-up for the songs I listened to a few days ago, and then while moving forward, I'm also going to do a retroactive for the first 12 or so days. To be clear, a "Day" does not mean I am doing this project every day. It just means times I sat down and listened to a chunk of songs. Looking ba...