Coldplay: Day 11

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 already talked about this song more in depth last time, but I think I'll take the opportunity to just list off some of the accolades that this song has received over the years. From Wikipedia, the song is 2x Platinum in the US (meaning 2,000,000 units sold)

These are various critics' lists that included the song on some "best-of" in some way or another. And the song won Record of the Year at the 2004 Grammys! In case you are now wondering like I am what the difference is between Record of the Year and Song of the Year, Record of the Year is actually rewarded to a specific recording of a song, and so honors not only the performing artists, but the producers, and other individuals who worked on the recording. Song of the Year, on the other hand, is rewarded specifically to the songwriter who wrote the lyrics/came up with the melody. I'm not sure how they decide which songs deserve one award more than the other, it feels a little bit like splitting hairs, but maybe there are meaningful distinctions when you really get into it.

Clocks was released with a couple of B-sides, the B-sides were named "Crests of Waves," and "Animals." Just like "Murder," both of them definitely feel like they belong in the era, but I wasn't really that interested in either of them either.

As an aside, I got curious how many famous songs have been named "Animals," since it seems like it might be a common song name. Turns out there aren't that many though. The one that made me think of this is obviously Animals by Maroon 5. I hated this song in high school because I thought the lyrics were so creepy. It was pretty popular though, and it is catchy. Other than that there's a song called "Animal" by Neon Trees that you probably wouldn't know from the name, but I bet if you read the lyrics you might recognize them 🎵Oh-ohh I want some mo-ore, Oh ohh, I want some mo-ore, Oh ohh, what are you wa-a-iting foooor, what are you wa-a-iting foooor, take a bite of my heart tonight🎵. Noah Kahan also has a song called Animal, that one's pretty good.

Later, on July 7, 2003, Coldplay released God Put a Smile upon Your Face as a single, along with "Murder" as a B-side. I've already talked about both of these songs so I'll just move on.

Just as I thought that this whole streak of songs was a fail though, Coldplay came out of nowhere to release this glorious banger on July 21, Clocks (Royksopp Trembling Heart Mix). I'm slightly joking when I call this a banger, but I was genuinely so surprised when I listened to it, it made me really happy. Just listen to it, it's so random and wildly different not only from the original song, but from the rest of their music in general. Röyskopp, it turns out, is a Norwegian electronic duo who for whatever reason decided to remix this song. If I'm being honest, I don't know if I can say they did a good job, the beats and sounds seem fine, but I feel like the style of their music and the style of the song Clocks are so different it just doesn't work. But despite that, I still really enjoyed listening to the song.

This song made me realize that I'm excited for Coldplay's pop-turn later on. It's blasphemous for OG Coldplayers I guess, but I think their early years of music just get a little boring when you listen to it too much. I'm glad I don't have 6 more albums of songs like "Animals" and "Crests of Waves" to listen to. And I suppose if they did just release 6 more albums of music like that they probably wouldn't have stayed popular and I might not even know their music anyways (this sounds like I'm hating on their early music, which I'm genuinely not, I really do appreciate their first two albums a lot more now than before, I just don't think they would have really become mainstream with this style of music).

Well that's it for today, next time I'm listening to their first live album release, "Live 2003," which was recorded in Sydney, Australia.

Oh and as I like to do, here's all the single arts

I really think it can be fun and informative to analyze the art that is chosen for the music. Not that I'm always good at it. Sometimes I feel like I can capture some more meaning in the music when considering it and other aspects though. Something I learned in a literature class in college is that often-times artists put way more thought than we think into their art because fundamentally, whatever medium you choose is limited in how much meaning it can convey, so artists have to utilize everything possible to convey what they want to convey. In French poetry (I know, I know), we would analyze not just the meaning of the words, but amount of words in a line, the length of words relative to each other, the gender of words, the number of lines, and still more in trying to come up with an analysis of a given poem (because French poets literally thought about all that when writing their poems). Sometimes I'm sure artists don't have a ton of extra meaning in what they do, but on the other hand, sometimes they do.

I won't work too hard on these two covers, but just off the bat I can see that in the Clocks art, they chose to visualize a person from below, meaning his(?) shoulders and head are captured as circular shapes. The song Clocks has a certain circular motion to its piano that sort of draws you in and surrounds you. So I think that could be a connection. Also it looks kind of like Mickey Mouse. The art for God Put a Smile Upon Your Face looks like two heads facing away from each other (Voldemort style) with the middle blown out. Last time I felt like this song was a break-up song so I think that could possibly be a visual representation of it.

Songs Listened To:

Murder - January 1, 2003

Clocks - Clocks, Crests of Waves, Animals - March 24, 2003

God Put a Smile upon Your Face, Murder - July 7, 2003

Clocks (Royskopp Trembling Heart Mix) - July 21, 2003