Coldplay: Day 15a

X&Y. Man it feels good to be finally done with writing retrospectives. It's been about 10 months (!) since I started this blog and I've made 10 posts, so generally I'm happy enough with my output. Ideally, I would probably be a little more frequent just because there is a lot of music and it's not like it takes so incredibly long to write one of these. Regardless though, it's been fun and I'm glad to have been doing this. In fact, my audience has grown! I'm pretty sure it was just my immediate family reading these for the most part but I shared it with a couple of friends and I somehow managed to convince them to let me put them on the email list. So if you guys are reading this, shout outs to you.

Another interesting thing that I'm curious about is my page views. My blogs are averaging something like 10-12 views per post, but there's been a lot of variance. My most recent post has 23 views while a different one only has 7. The thing is though, I definitely don't have 23 individuals reading these things. My informal count is 8, and it was 5 until just recently. So I'm really curious what accounts for all these extra views. I don't think my blog was searchable on Google until just a few days ago when I realized you have to like do this thing of submitting your website to Google to enable its searchability. Even after I did that though, I can't find it if I intentionally search things to try to make it pop up. So the chances of outsiders having found this blog are pretty low, I think. So I guess the page views are just the same people opening up the page multiple times? That's my best guess at this point. If you're out there reading this though and you don't know me personally, please leave me a comment, I would be so curious and happy to know if there's anyone out there reading this outside of those I shared it with (probably not though).

I've now reached Coldplay's third album X&Y in my listening. This album was released on June 6, 2005 when I was six years old. I actually started listening to X&Y and wrote about it back on Day 14, but I only listened to one song, so now I'm finishing the album. There were several songs I listened to for the first time and overall I enjoyed the album, more than I expected. I wrote previously that this album marked a shift in sound with faster more upbeat songs contrasting with A Rush of Blood to the Head and Parachutes. I stand by that statement somewhat, but I think that's only true for some of the songs on the album. Some songs feel like they could have been part of their previous work, and others are not upbeat, but somewhat serious and grand. Another new aspect of the album is a somewhat more abstract lyrical matter. Instead of only singing about love, heartache, and relationships (though there is plenty of that still), they have some musings about the universe, and the world, and humanity.

I think this album cover can represent the nature of the songs.
 Serious, grand, abstract, with splashes of color mixed in. 

In talking about the abstract nature of some of the songs, there is a slight sci-fi vibe to some of the songs that I think is new. Speed of Sound, of course has that in the title and the lyrics, "Birds go flying at the speed of sound, to show you how it all began." Or in White Shadows, "All of the stars and the outer space // Part of a system, a plan." Also in Twisted Logic, "Hundreds of years in the future // There could be computers // Looking for life on Earth." Reviewer Jon Pareles noted that in X&Y, Chris Martin made somewhat of a shift, lyrically, from using the pronoun "I", to the pronoun "you." (The Case Against Coldplay - The New York Times) Another reviewer noted that Coldplay reached for the stars with grandiose music and planetary references (X&Y | EW.com) (of course they will double and triple down on planetary themes 16 years later with Music of the Spheres). They even apparently tried to touch on contemporary issues with a song about the environment. I think that this album marks the beginning of Coldplay's shift toward universalism in their music. Universalism, not in the religious sense, but in the sense of making music for everyone, and almost trying to represent all of humanity in their songs. Of course, like I said I only view it as the beginning of a shift, not nearly on the levels that it would become later on.

Coldplay Universality Chart (Get excited because I *will* be filling this out with each album)

Album - Themes - Level of Universality

When it comes to the songs themselves, out of 13 songs on the album, there were eight which I had never heard before. Those eight were What If, White Shadows, X&Y, A Message, Low, The Hardest Part, Swallowed in the Sea, and Twisted Logic.

What If is a song that could definitely have been on A Rush of Blood to the Head. It's a mid-tempo piano ballad that asks a bunch of what-ifs to someone, probably a love interest, in an attempt to make them see that they should take a chance in being together. Overall I liked it and it feels very classic Coldplay.

White Shadows is one of the ones I would say feels more sci-fi, more new-age-y (I don't know if that's the right term). It sings about being a part of a system, about waking up, and about our place within both the universe and the human race. The main electric guitar riff feels sort of mysterious and futuristic.

X&Y is the namesake of the album of course. It's sort of a slow building song that tries to end huge. The album name X&Y is supposed to evoke math and equations, with the idea of difficult to solve problems The song X&Y seems to evoke that mostly with lyrics about a relationship that's maybe reached an unsolvable point.

A Message is actually one of the more popular ones on the album (at least in streams). It is, well, a message, to maybe his wife or something about his love for her and his desire for her to be well. It feels pretty basic though.

Low is a long song that has a sort of driving, messy guitar line throughout basically the whole song. It feels slightly grungier, slightly angrier (this is all relative, mind you) than the other songs on the album.

The Hardest Part is another one that is actually pretty popular on the album. The song is really just about a breakup, but it's got a catchy chorus and vibes that I like. Probably the only new one that I could see myself returning to a little more often.

Swallowed in the Sea is a sort of soft rock song that uses a bunch of different metaphors to talk about some feelings of heartache.

Lastly, Twisted Logic is the one that is apparently about environmentalism. It's another slow builder which ends in a big shouting crescendo.

Listening to this album I do understand why some critics and people got sick of Coldplay around this time. Although their songs are very nice to listen to, they often default to a sort of cheesy tone, always going for an emotionally swelling chorus. It honestly doesn't bother me that much, but I can see why it would to others and why people would accuse them of being fake.

I have some more content I want to put out regarding some of the songs on this album, but it got a little long so I'm gonna split it into two parts. Stay tuned for part 2 coming soon!

Songs Listened To:

What If, White Shadows, Fix You, Talk, X&Y, Speed of Sound, A Message, Low, The Hardest Part, Swallowed in the Sea, Twisted Logic, Til Kingdom Come - June 7, 2005