Coldplay: Day 17b
So having said all that I've said about Coldplay (see Day 17a), this album in particular is one of the few that most people agree is pretty good.
Personally, some of my favorite Coldplay tracks are on this album, although there are also a few that I had never heard before starting this project. Above all, this album is known for its centerpiece single, Viva La Vida. This song is truly iconic. The soaring, bouncing strings that begin the song just instantly take you away to a world of kings and saints from the first moment. Viva La Vida has to be one of the most recognizable and loved songs of the 21st century. On Spotify, it has accumulated 3.1 billion streams, making it the 34th most streamed song of all time (the only Coldplay song higher is Yellow, with 3.5 billion streams). It won Song of the Year at the 2009 Grammy's as well, making it the last of 7 Grammy's they ever won. If you recall, Song of the Year is awarded to the artists specifically, highlighting the songwriting, Record of the Year (which they won for Clocks in 2004), highlights a specific recording and so includes the producers as well.
This song was very difficult for Coldplay to make. By their own words, it went through over 50 different versions, with ideas being constantly tried and discarded in order to make the song how they wanted it (1). Then, when it was time to release the album, the record label tried to get them to take it off, saying it didn't "sound like Coldplay." (2) An anecdote from the making of the song that I enjoyed goes like this:
"We took a long time to work out how to do it, then one day we found that sort of church bell sound in the chorus, and then we finished it. It's really weird how you can have a song that's completely finished in terms of the lyrics and the melody and everything, but you're just missing one noise."
then the band manager:
"I remember Chris hearing it and his face lit up and it was probably the happiest I've ever seen him in the recording studio. He just said, 'That's it.'" (1)
I think that searching and searching for one last element to perfect something is an exceedingly common thing for artists to run into, so I enjoy this anecdote because it shows off that artist struggle between perfecting something and finishing something. There's a certain level of patience and endurance that it takes to be a great artist. You have to be willing to forgo finishing your project and sitting in the discomfort of unfinished business as you search for the last, perfect piece. I wouldn't call my writing great art, but I nevertheless do experience that feeling when I write. Sometimes, of course, it's better to just finish what you're working on regardless of if it's perfect or not, on the other hand, sometimes you just know that it won't be right until you find that last piece, and you have to go searching for it.
As for the song itself, I am a big fan of it. I remember in my teenage years listening to this song and being swept away by the lyrics of kings, Romans, and missionaries. Then when I was 21, and had just got back from my mission, I was living on the internet like most people were in April 2020 and I remember going onto YouTube and searching up old songs I had liked before. For some reason I remember so clearly watching the Viva La Vida music video and then scrolling through the comments reading those classic YouTube comments, "Anyone here in 2020?" and those early COVID-era YouTube comments where everyone was just commiserating in random comment sections about lockdown and social distancing.
Later, sometime in 2020 or 2021, this song got remixed with a rap song into a popular social media audio that is pretty fun and I still think of to this da. This is the one: Coldplay, Savage - Viva La Vida X Swing (TikTok Remix) (warning: language).
If you happen to scroll through the YouTube comments on the Viva La Vida music video today, you'll see lots of references to the video game Minecraft, which probably doesn't make a lot of sense on its face. The reason for this is a now-legendary video by a Minecraft creator back in 2012 that parodied Viva La Vida with Minecraft lyrics and an animated story. I personally didn't play Minecraft growing up, so it's not very nostalgic for me, but 2012 was basically prime YouTube era for people my age, so it's fun for me to see all these people that I know are around my age getting nostalgic for our childhoods and sharing our own late 90s, early 2000s babies culture.
After Viva La Vida, there is the song Lovers in Japan. This one is another fan favorite, and probably my 2nd or 3rd favorite Coldplay song. Like a lot of Coldplay songs, it's more about a feeling than anything else. Apparently, Coldplay visited Japan and felt that it was very romantic, unlike the typical ways of thinking of Japan (neon signs, and crowded cities) so they wrote a song about it (3). The lyrics are pretty vague, and Japan is only mentioned once, with the line "Dreamin' of the Osaka sun." The song is actually split into two, with the first half being the eponymous Lovers in Japan, and the second half a "secret" song called Reign of Love that they combined with it to shorten the track list.
So why is this one of my favorite Coldplay songs? It's just so joyful. From its first moments the song is like a warm embrace. It makes me think of the sun: sunrise on a mountaintop, or sunset out the car window on the open road. The lyrics are kind of meaningless, but the feeling is so uplifting you feel like you can take on the world as you listen to it, like anything is possible. To be honest there are a several Coldplay songs that give you this feeling, but I don't know, this one is special. An interesting thing about the song is that the signature riff of the song is actually played on a DIY tack piano. A tack piano imitates old fashioned piano sounds and harpsichords by actually striking the strings with brass tacks instead of felt hammers. The band built it themselves by literally pushing tacks into the hammers.
The second half of the track, like I mentioned, is a completely different song. It's a slow-paced, little piano thing that sings about love. My sister-in-law is a Coldplay fan as well and Lovers in Japan is her favorite song by them (if I remember correctly). One time I was talking to her about it, and I mentioned that I didn't really like the Reign of Love section and she got mad haha. So now I think about that every time. And I have come to appreciate it more during this listen.
One last thing about this song is I just discovered an acoustic version of it on YouTube. And as much as I love the original, this honestly gives it a run for its money. It is Beautiful.
So, the last song I really wanted to highlight from this album is Strawberry Swing. This is a track that a lot of the critics really liked, often citing its melody and African-influenced style. I don't really know what's African-influenced about it, to be honest, but I do enjoy the song quite a bit. The song itself is somewhat abstract, singing about a "strawberry swing" (as in a literal swing for sitting in) where he passes a perfect day with his loved ones. The song is another one of those Coldplay songs that just makes you happy. It has this infectious, bright guitar line that just picks you up and it feels like you're sitting in a field of strawberries in the sunshine.
One of the lyrics in the song is the line "Now my feet won't touch the ground." If you've been following along or listening along at all, you would notice that that lyric has been included in several songs from this album as well as being the name of a song on the Prospekt's March EP. I don't really know why he chose to focus on this line so much during this album era, but I actually like the line because I think it captures a little bit of what Coldplay is so good at. A lot of Coldplay songs just feel transcendent, they just pick you up, like I said earlier. I like how the line makes it sound like it's almost outside of his control; his feet being lifted off the ground. Sometimes it feels like that listening to a good Coldplay song. It just lifts you up, even if the lyrics are silly, even if you know in the back of your mind it's a tiny bit cringe.
One last thing about this song is a pretty well-known rap/R&B artist named Frank Ocean did a cover of it way back at the beginning of his career. It's funny because Frank Ocean is exactly the kind of edgy, critically acclaimed artist that Coldplay is not, so it seems like an unlikely crossover. He actually changed a lot of the lyrics to be heavier with a more overt theme of holding onto good times in an ending world. I honestly quite like the cover, although I think the original version is doing some of the heavy lifting.
After those main songs, and Violet Hill which I've talked about already, there are six other songs on the album. The songs Lost! and Life in Technicolor both have alternate versions on the Prospekt's March EP. Lost! is fine, but I find it a little abrasive. Cemeteries of London, Yes, and 42 are all songs that I had maybe listened to once over the years and promptly forgot. I actually like all three of them, but not enough to jump into my favorites.
Yes is another double song like Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love. The "hidden" song is actually called Chinese Sleep Chant. I'm not sure why it's called that because I couldn't find anything Chinese about it. Both Yes and 42 I found to be somewhat emblematic of Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends in that they have distinct styles moving very noticeably away from Coldplay's typical work. Yes incorporates Arabic strings in a very cool fashion, while 42 is almost a fakeout, transitioning halfway from a piano ballad into a punk-ish guitar jam. Interestingly, it's the first song they ever wrote without a chorus (4).
The last song on the album is Death and All His Friends, also known as the second half of the album name. Shout-out again to my sister-in-law, she told me she was interested to see what I thought about this song when I got here on the blog, so here it is: it's pretty cool. This is actually my favorite of the songs I didn't already know (although I do pretty much like all of them). It's probably the slowest song on the album, and I usually don't like slower songs as much, but this one has a lot of feeling to it. Also it isn't really that slow in comparison to other slow Coldplay songs, since this album in general is faster-paced. I'm gonna share a couple final thoughts on the album and I will talk about this song a little more there.
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