Coldplay: Day 10

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, culture, and music, and while Coldplay has been a lot of things, they very rarely are those things (you might wonder, have they ever been those things? I think their 2019 album Everyday Life has at least a bit of cynicism and edge to it). When they were first getting big, they were very publicly hated on for their music style by a few voices in the British music industry, and then basically this hate went mainstream. I think this article (https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-do-we-hate-coldplay/), written by a British person, does a good job of capturing some of it:

In the US, on the other hand, or at least in Utah in the 2010s, there was no stigma around liking Coldplay. I remember people talking excitedly about their concerts, people enjoying their latest singles on the radio and at dances, and I have one random memory of someone listing them as their favorite band in a get-to-know-you presentation in 10th grade Health class.

Either way though, I'll jump into reviewing the songs themselves. The album opens up with a new song that wasn't released earlier as a a single called Politik.

Similar to what I talked about last time, the songs in A Rush of Blood to the Head feel intentionally direct and upfront in comparison to the sly, softness of Parachutes. This is apparent most of all in the very opening of the album as Politik opens with a banging guitar riff that sounds nothing like anything on Parachutes.

The NME ranking I've referenced before says this about it and has it as their 8th best song of all time. I wouldn't rank it that high, but it's a decent song. (Also it totally sounds like Air Catcher by Twenty One Pilots, or more accurately Air Catcher sounds like it).

Also I was trying to figure out why the song is called Politik, both the word and the spelling. I guess "politik" is the spelling for the word "politics" in some other languages, and the word itself is used in the line "tell me your own politik." There's also the opening two lines "Look at Earth from outer space / Everyone must find a place." Along with the sort of angsty, hard-driving tone of the song, it seems like the word and title Politik might represent a search for self. Everyone has their own "politik", which is like what they stand for, politically, morally, and in other ways, and in the song they are searching for their own and trying to get to know the politik of others. I think it could maybe apply in a personal and in a music sense too, where Coldplay is making a statement on where they stand musically.

Okay so I just looked up some interpretations and apparently it was written right after 9/11 and was meant to be "reflective of the state of the world". So I think my interpretation is kind of right.

Alright well I'll try not to be quite so long-winded about every song on the album or this will take a long time.

The next song is In My Place, which I already talked about in the previous post. I still like this one and I think it might be my first or second favorite on the album.

The next one is called God Put a Smile upon Your Face. I like this one a pretty good amount. It's not as exciting as some of the other ones on the album, but it's got a satisfying sort of circular momentum as the song resolves into the line "God put a smile upon your face," or something similar over and over again. I thought for a second the song was like some profound message about the inherent goodness of humans, but then I re-read the lyrics and I think it might just be a breakup song.

The next two songs are the two most popular ones on the album, and two of the more well-known Coldplay songs overall: The Scientist and Clocks. The Scientist I already talked about previously, and I mentioned Clocks as a song that I used to listen to way back in Junior High. That being said I think a few more words about Clocks are probably merited. This song is a little weird! Not like super weird or anything, but just kind of unique. To me it doesn't feel like it belongs on the album specifically, it's just it's own thing. The centerpiece of the song is the swirling piano motif that like instantly draws you into another world. You'll have to listen to it to understand. Adding to the otherworldly feel are the dream-like lyrics and production with lines like "shoot an apple off my head," "tigers waiting to be tamed," and "closing walls and ticking clocks," and the piano motif that just swirls around Chris Martin's falsetto for a lot of the song. Coldplay has been criticized before for having non-sensical lyrics, but in this case at least, I think they definitely work as it adds to the weird atmosphere of the song. Looking back it seems kind of weird that this was on my workout playlist, but I guess beggars couldn't be choosers (beggars as in I only knew like three bands so I didn't have much variety).

That wraps up the first half of the album (technically the first 45%), and I differentiate it like that in my head I feel like the first half is really, really good. Actually just 5 straight bangers no misses really. The last six songs of the album were all pretty good but not quite as memorable as the first five though. Those songs are Daylight, Green Eyes, Warning Sign, A Whisper, the eponymous A Rush of Blood to the Head, and Amsterdam.

Out of those six I think I would rank them as follows:

1. A Whisper - this one is my favorite just because I like the guitar stuff going on. The lyrics are somewhat repetitive

2. Daylight - this one has a cool guitar riff that plays throughout, and honestly it does feel like its namesake: daylight. The last bit of the song is just the line "Slowly breaking through the daylight" repeated over and over again and it kind of feels like that, like the sun breaking through the clouds in the morning.

3. Green Eyes - this one is just decently catchy. It's somewhat obviously about a girl with green eyes. Funnily enough, when Chris Martin started dating Gwyneth Paltrow he stopped playing this song because apparently it offended her (since it wasn't about her).

4. Warning Sign - alright this one's decent too. It also seems to be alluding to a previous relationship, with a sense of regret for ending the relationship too early, I think. The last line is "Yes, I crawl back into your open arms," but I think that's his fantasy, not what actually happened.

5. A Rush of Blood to the Head - Since this is the namesake for the album, I think I should dig into this one at least a little bit. The song is pretty long and lyric-heavy, and seems to me like it's got a theme of making mistakes. The song/album name itself is used in this context: "Blame it all on a rush of blood to the head," which seems to mean that in this context a rush of blood to the head refers to like a passing psychosis, or a lapse in judgement, or maybe losing control in some way. I'm not sure why they'd choose to name their album this though. Maybe it's almost tongue-in-cheek like they're coyly acknowledging that they updated their sound a bit with this album and if people don't like it, well, blame it on a rush of blood to the head. It could also tie in possibly with the political themes of Politik, like a commentary on the angry state of the world (was the world angry back in 2002? I feel like we talk about the polarisation and anger in society now as a consequence of social media, but that didn't exist back then. But I think post 9/11 America was pretty angry, right? IDK).

6. Amsterdam - I thought the last one and this one were a little boring music-wise, Amsterdam perhaps even more so than AROBTTH. The lyrics themselves seem to follow up on the theme of mistakes from the previous one and it ends with I guess a hopeful note: "Stood on the edge, tied to a noose / And you came along and cut me loose." Who is "you"???? I guess we'll never know.

Well last but not least, here's the album cover. Apparently this cover was not created by the band but was a piece of 3D imaging art that they found and requested to use (see the artwork section on the Wikipedia page).

It's certainly an interesting image. Maybe they liked it because of the jagged, imperfect, nature of the final image. It could be a statement on the imperfection/brokenness of human beings or something like that. Or maybe they just thought it fit the vibe of the music.

What do you think the album cover could mean? Do you think it fits the album? Or how does it affect your perception of the album?

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Songs Listened To:

A Rush of Blood to the Head (LP) - August 27, 2002