Coldplay: Day 20

Welcome back to the Coldplay blog, everybody. This post is all about Coldplay's fifth album, Mylo Xyloto (it's pronounced "Myloh Zye-loh-toh"). Mylo Xyloto is my favorite Coldplay album (last time I said I wasn't sure if it would remain that way, but I think it does), and I ended up laboring over this post for quite a long time. I apologize in advance if it's too long, haha. I don't know if I want my future posts to generally be this long and intense, but I had a hard time moving past this one, since so many of the songs on it are some of my favorites. So for now, enjoy this one.

Mylo Xyloto is Coldplay's fifth album, and their first since the acclaimed Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends. As I talked about in my previous post, this album is known for the continuation and expansion of the genre shift that Coldplay had started with Viva La Vida, incorporating more pop sensibilities, and moving from fitting neatly into one genre (rock), to being a band that fits into mainstream pop while also hopping around to whatever they feel like doing.

So is Mylo Xyloto similar to Viva La Vida, then? A neat collection of songs, focused on a central theme but with a variety of topics and styles? Not exactly. Instead, Mylo Xyloto is what is called a concept album. This term can have different meanings, but often it is used to describe albums that tell a singular narrative throughout their songs. You can imagine it as a book, or a movie, but in music.

The concept (and story) of Mylo Xyloto is of a fictional planet called Silencia where a totalitarian government is cracking down on the expression of color and music. On this planet, there are two groups warring against each other over this crackdown, the "silencers," who are the police force enforcing the suppression of color and music, and the "sparkers," who are rebellious civilians possessing magical powers to harness light and energy. The main story follows a boy and a girl who fall in love amidst this war. The boy, Mylo Xyloto, is a member of the silencers, and spends his life hunting down sparkers. However, after a chance encounter with Fly, a most-wanted sparker criminal, he awakens his sparker abilities, learns his past, and begins to fall in love.

The album itself doesn't tell much of the story explicitly, it's more atmospheric, and implied than anything. But the whole story is actually contained in a set of comics that Coldplay released in conjunction with the album, I haven't actually read the comics, so I'm honestly not sure how the story ends or all the details. A fun fact is that before creating the album and comics, Coldplay had originally intended to turn their idea into a "music-driven feature animated film." I think that would have been pretty funny if they had actually gone through with that.

Volume 3

So this world of Silencia is what is called a dystopia. It's funny that a dystopian-style world is what they created, since this was the time of the great fad of dystopian books and movies (see: Why the YA dystopia fad launched, soared, crashed, and burned). This "fad" was a period of time (maybe mid 2000s to mid 2010s), where books and movies about dystopias became extremely popular, especially among young adult audiences. The main example of this was The Hunger Games books and movies, which while not the first dystopian series of the time, was probably the most influential, inspiring several other very similar books and movies in the years to come.

I want to talk a little bit about this concept of dystopias. If you didn't know, a dystopia is, by definition,

 

"an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic." (2)

The term originally came about as the opposite of 'utopia,' referring to novels and other works that imagined terrible, inhumane societies, often in contrast to perfect, utopic societies of other works. Over time, a sort of literary definition of dystopias developed due to similar characteristics of the societies that these books imagined.

A classic example of a dystopia is 1984 by George Orwell. In this book, a totalitarian government controls the thoughts and actions of its citizens, monitoring them through technology and shaping their thoughts through propaganda. This book is definitely geared towards adults, with heavy, intellectual themes and disturbing events happening to its characters. Young adult dystopian fiction though, while perhaps dumbed down a tad for its audience, also engages with heavy themes and dark material, such as totalitarianism, surveillance, emotional suppression, or discrimination (3).

But how does this relate to Coldplay though? Well, like I mentioned, in creating the album Mylo Xyloto, Coldplay created a world, plot, and characters whose stories they would tell throughout the album and the surrounding material. This world fits this idea of a dystopia. On Silencia, a totalitarian government (ruled by a leader named Major Minus) has weaponized technology and military to suppress its citizens (again, by getting rid of sound and color). This is done under the pretense of protecting its citizens from "feeders," or creatures that supposedly feed on sound and color.

The citizens are suppressed in a couple of important ways, the first is that the "silencers" rule the streets, fighting "sparkers" and ensuring obedience from the people. The second is that Major Minus implemented a surveillance technology called the Hypnofeed, which is a helmet all citizens wear over their head, both watching them and restricting their own vision of the world. Apparently, the Hypnofeed only shows the surrounding world in black and white to everyone who wears it (I think this is a little bit of a contradiction, since Major Minus is already banning all color, it shouldn't matter if the Hypnofeed also blocks color, but whatever, I think when they focused on making the album vs. the movie, they stopped worrying about the details.

The Hypnofeed helmets on Silencia

Regardless, I think Coldplay was intentional in choosing to create a dystopian world to set their story in. They wanted to get a little political with it, and make some points about society. Dystopian literature has a rich history of social critique, often serving as prophecy or warning from the author to current trends or issues. An example of this is another classic dystopian novel, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, which criticized the spread of entertainment, creating a satirical world where people are numbed by constant entertainment, and unable to overthrow their evil government.

So what points did Coldplay want to make about society, then? Well with things like the Hypnofeed, you can see some criticism about technology, perhaps a pointed reference to government surveillance. With the character Major Minus, you have a pretty obvious call-out to dictators and fascists. Perhaps the centerpiece of this Silencia world though, is the importance of sound and color in human life. In this sense, it's kind of like some other dystopian works, that value the human experience in its fullness. The Giver, for example, is all about the importance of people experiencing the full range of human emotions, even the bad ones. With Silencia, I think Coldplay is making a more lighthearted version of this argument that focuses on (in typical Coldplay style) the beauty and value of the human experience, including basic things, like color, and music.

I think this lightheartedness is important here. Even as Coldplay touches on these darker themes, they remain a sort of family-friendly band. To go along with that, I think they've created a kind of idealized version of a dystopia. Unlike something like The Hunger Games, where kids die, and people live in genuine oppression and despair, the fight between the sparkers and the silencers is more playful and fun. The sparkers run around the city at night, spreading their color graffiti all over the city, and the silencers try to catch them and throw them into prison.

The "sparkers" at work, Hurts Like Heaven music video

Obviously, the stakes are high, eliminating sound and color is pretty bleak if you stop and think about it, but it's just silly enough that it feels more fantasy than gritty reality.

And I think making this fantasy version of dystopia allowed them to focus not on things like pain and suffering, but on more idealistic things. The idea of rebellion, the feeling of resistance and of solidarity, and the aesthetic of fighting the power. 

The album was released on October 19, 2011, almost fifteen years ago now. It consists of fourteen songs, some of which are more interludes than full songs.

1. Mylo Xyloto 0:43

2. Hurts Like Heaven 4:02

3. Paradise 4:37

4. Charlie Brown 4:45

5. Us Against the World 3:59

6. M.M.I.X 0:48

7. Every Teardrop is a Waterfall 4:00

8. Major Minus 3:30

9. U.F.O. 2:17

10. Princess of China (with Rihanna) 3:59

11. Up in Flames 3:13

12. A Hopeful Transmission 0:33

13. Don't Let it Break Your Heart 3:53

14. Up With the Birds 3:47

After the prelude, Hurts Like Heaven is the first song that comes up on the album. This song really kicks off the themes of the album, speaking to ideas of resistance and rebellion, and alluding to the struggle between the people and Major Minus. A catchy, pop-rock song, this is one of my favorites on the album and I think it jumps into my personal top 10. The music video delves into the "lore" of Silencia, through an animated comic, while the lyrics speak somewhat vaguely towards images of urban resistance and graffiti. If you're interested, I recommend checking out the music video below, both because it's a great song and because the animation is pretty cool. Also you can get a sense for the world of Silencia.

But yeah, I think this jumps into my top 10. It was already crowded so I'm not sure which song it would knock off, but it's a really fun one. I was reading some reviews online to get a sense of how to describe this song, and one phrase that stuck out to me was "pure pop-rock bliss." Another website described it as a "pop ditty," with a "melodic, upbeat groove," full of "dreamy synths." For me, it contains one of my favorite parts on the album, in the pre-chorus after the second verse, it leads in with the line "Still I won't let go-o, still I won't let go-o // Of You!" And on "You!" the vocals and guitar just swell into this big cresting sound that just makes me feel light and hopeful inside. Even on bad days when I really feel off, there's some power, some alchemy in this song and other songs by Coldplay that can do that.

I want to talk about the lyrics for a second,

"Written in graffiti on a bridge in the park / ... / Written up in marker on a factory sign / ... / See the arrow that they shot trying to tear us apart / Take the fire from my belly and the beat from my heart"

Coldplay said that they were inspired by graffiti and street art, as well as urban movements and imagery in creating the album. In this song, they're evoking a sort of working-class resistance ethos. The common person, beaten down by the elites or the government ("Take the fire from my belly and the beat from my heart"), spreading a message in the factory line, or defacing public property with a message of solidarity or resistance. Like I mentioned, there's no specifics, no politics. It's just the feeling, the vibe of fighting the power, of being a part of a movement.

Switching gears for a moment is the song Paradise. By far the biggest hit off the album, Paradise peaked at #15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and remains one of the most popular and well-known songs in all their discography. This song holds a fair bit of nostalgia for me, it very specifically makes me think of car rides to California in the summer with my family. One year (it must have been 2012 or 2013), I read a couple of books from the series Peter and the Starcatchers (which is like a reworking of the Peter Pan story), and the feelings of adventure, romance, and freedom left a pretty big impression on me. We must have listened to Paradise on the car ride, because ever since then, when I hear the song (as well as the song, "Stubborn Love" by the Lumineers), I always get taken back to sitting in the car in the hot sun of Nevada or Eastern California, daydreaming about adventures. Weirdly enough, I never went back and finished the series, so I'll just always have that memory instead.

One other memory this song brings up for me is from around that same time as well: my 7th grade choir finals in 2012. In my 7th grade choir class, we all had to get up and sing a song in front of the class at the end of the year in order to graduate. For some reason, I remember so clearly one kid singing Paradise for his song. I barely knew the song back then, and I think some of the kids thought it was a weird choice because I feel like I remember someone laughing. Of course, I could be remembering wrong, or they could have been laughing about something else entirely, but for some reason that's the way the memory is in my head. For my performance I sang Silent Night. I wanted to sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame, but someone else did it before me, so I couldn't anymore. Something funny about it is I remember getting to the end of the song, "Slee-eep in hea-ven-ly peeea-ce," and realizing I couldn't sing low enough to hit the bottom note, so at the last minute I jumped up the octave for the last note. I remember being kind of embarrassed about it, but maybe my choir teacher thought it showed good musical sense.

In the world of Silencia, the song doesn't contribute too much to the story. Some people have interpreted the lyrics of the song as being from the perspective of Fly, the main female protagonist. The song basically tells of a girl who dreams of escaping her difficult life into paradise. Some of the lyrics like "In the night the stormy night, she closed her eyes // In the night the stormy night, away she'd fly," (emphasis added) can be interpreted as her dreaming of a better life as a coping mechanism with the oppression that she lives in. Apparently, the song was written before the album Mylo Xyloto was even created, so my guess is they retroactively made it connect a little bit to the world once they decided to put it on the album.

Paradise MV (Chris Martin is wearing the elephant suit)
 Note the graffiti in the background

There are still quite a few songs I want to talk about from the album, but I'm gonna have a little break first and talk about the Coldplay Universality Chart again.

*Coldplay Universality Chart*

Album - Themes - Level of Universality

On one note, I'm halfway! This whole blog process has taken me a lot longer than I guessed, a year and a half ago when I started it. It's been fun though, and I plan to keep on going until I finish it all (however long that takes, lol).

Overall, I think the album definitely continues Coldplay's shift towards universality and making music that is "for" everyone. I would rate it as a little bit less universal than Viva La Vida... though, just because its themes are a little more specific and aimed towards certain emotions, rather than huge ideas like life, death, war, and God. I think though, that the things the album talks about are universal, at least in a certain sense. Just like how everyone who watches Star Wars roots for the rebels, and everyone who reads The Hunger Games roots against the Capitol, we all have within us the ability to recognize oppression and feel the spark of rebellion. In some ways, I think there's nothing that could be more exciting than a life spent with purpose, overthrowing a corrupt and evil government, or bringing justice to your fellow brothers and sisters. And I think that's what Coldplay was trying to capture here, or at least that's how I relate to what they do here. Of course, we all want to live in peace and prosperity, but at least for me (and maybe others can relate), there's a part of me that just wants to live a life of adventure and excitement, and be engaged in a meaningful cause.

Mylo in his "silencer" uniform

Next up on the album, is a pretty great song: Charlie Brown. I say "pretty great" with a wink and a nod, because as my family knows, this is actually my FAVORITE Coldplay song of all time! Charlie Brown is a super fun head-banger of a song, probably the most exciting song on the album, with a stellar guitar/xylophone riff at the center of it (if you listen, you can hear the tinkle of the xylophone in the background during the big riff). The song is not really about Peanuts (the comic strip), although the name does come from the character Charlie Brown. Apparently, at one point they included a reference to the character in the lyrics but later pulled it out. The song isn't about any one thing in particular, it's more referencing this feeling of letting go, being free, and feeling hope and passion.

Some people have described it as a coming-of-age, loss of innocence song, based on the opening lyrics:

"Stole a key // Took a car downtown where the lost boys meet // Took a car downtown and took what they offered me // To set me free"

The rest of the lyrics make allusions to things like resistance under oppression,

"When they smash my heart into smithereens // Be a bright red rose come bursting the concrete"

freedom and passion,

"Light a fire, a fire a spark // Light a fire, a flame in my heart // We'll run wild"

and possibly the sparker/silencer war on Silencia.

 "We'll be glowing in the dark."

There's a sort of nostalgic feeling of promise in the song that I think is part of why it became my favorite. The beginning of the song has these distorted, floaty voices that make me think of big crowds, high school concerts, and late nights under dark skies. It then creeps up into the huge head-banging guitar riff, while the rest of the song keeps this driving, pounding rhythm, almost never letting up until it ends with a soft little piano number.

In comparison with other Coldplay songs that I really love, I think one thing that makes Charlie Brown stand out to me is its confidence and directness. It just seems to come right at you with its big, ambitious melodies, holding nothing back, and just pushing you along with its energy. Because of that, I think this song always hit me a little harder than others.

The song also has some really cool imagery and lyrics. I really like the motif of "glowing in the dark." It, of course, can be a reference to the sparkers spreading colorful graffiti throughout the city, but also, I think it speaks to the idea of individuality. When you're young, all you want to do is stand out, and I think "glowing in the dark" captures that dream of being special, being different. It also can refer to finding strength and resilience in darkness, which is another theme of the album.

One other line I like is "All the boys, all the girls, all that matters in the world." As the rest of the song sings about developing passion for a cause, and living life freely and with meaning, bringing to mind a sort of delirious cyber-punk ride, this line brings me back to the dystopian Silencia, saying, strip away all the extra things, the government oppression, the difficult reality. In the nighttime, away from all that, it's just the boys and the girls, it's just us. In our modern, complicated world, this applies too, strip away all the detritus and remember it's about the boys and the girls. We want to be like Charlie and Sam in The Perks of Being a Wallflower: arms out in the back of the truck, feeling the wind go by, living in the moment. In that book/movie, Charlie, the main character, says in that moment "I feel infinite." And I think that's what I'm trying to get at here. We're all infinite, not in the sense that we'll go on forever, but in the sense that our value is infinite. It transcends any structure, and any creation, yes, and even more importantly, it reaches deeper than anything. Below all the things we've built up on the Earth and in society, we exist. At the deepest level, below any pain we've put on ourselves (or others have put on us), we exist.

Sorry if that got too out there, but I'm trying to describe a certain feeling. Although we obviously have reality and life to deal with, I think it's good to hold on to some feelings in the back of our minds, to remind us from time to time that we're more than just the things we deal with, more than just our situations. It might be stupid to get all that from a Coldplay song, but that's how this song makes me feel.

Charlie Brown MV

A couple more things about the song now. A while ago, I mentioned an article someone wrote in 2020 ranking every Coldplay song in "order of greatness." (4) I really liked this ranking because I felt like whoever wrote it had a similar taste in Coldplay to me. For example, it had Hurts Like Heaven at #11, Glass of Water (from the Prospekt's March EP) at #15, Lovers in Japan at #17, and Life in Technicolor ii at #30 (remember this is out of 142 songs so #30 is pretty high). I mentioned before that they ranked Yellow as #1, a fair and reasonable ranking, but what, pray tell, did they rank as #2? Yep, Charlie Brown. They wrote this about the song:

"“We’ll run riot / We’ll be glowing in the dark“. You haven’t felt magic, the kind that makes every hair on the back of your neck stand up, until you’ve heard those words out loud in the middle of a sea of thousands and thousands of people, as endless glittering lights come to life. Xylobands, the light-up wristbands created by Coldplay fan Jason Regler, take centre stage during ‘Charlie Brown’, where the jubilant ascending guitars and promises of lighting a fire, a spark, sparkle and dance in real-time. And even without that image – it’s one that you yell, an Arcade Fire-infused anthem, one letting liquid happiness spread through your bloodstream, while the sky full of Xylobands turn any dark night into a million colours. It’s glorious." (4)

Sadly, I haven't been to a Coldplay concert yet to experience this magic. I just hope that when I do, they still play my favorite Coldplay song: Charlie Brown. Apparently, they're continuing the Music of the Spheres World Tour in 2027, so now I'm starting to plan for that. If anyone reading this wants to come, that would be so fun! Maybe I'll try to time this blog so it finishes next year when/if I go to the concert. That would be kind of crazy.

A couple years ago I did something kind of crazy: I learned a Coldplay song on the piano for my sister-in-law. I guess it's not that crazy, but I had never done something like it before. I did it for my family Christmas tradition of making Christmas presents for someone else in the family. Every year we draw names and handmake a gift for the person we draw. In 2024, I drew my sister-in-law's name and that's the idea I came up with, since Coldplay is one of her favorite bands. It was a really cool experience though. I learned to play the song on the piano, and then I added in singing! Then I contacted someone in my neighborhood who does music production and he actually helped me do a professional recording of the song! It was pretty fun to mess around with production equipment for an afternoon and feel like a musical artist. And it turned out pretty good! Here's the recording for anyone who reads this and has never heard it.

So yeah, I chose the song Charlie Brown. I chose that one because it's my favorite Coldplay song, but I didn't choose to do this whole Christmas present just because I like Coldplay. The funny thing is, before 2024, I didn't really have any special connection to the band Coldplay. I randomly started doing this blog that year, and then completely unrelated, I made this song for my sister-in-law because Coldplay is one of her favorite bands. Now I have this whole history and deep knowledge of Coldplay (which I don't regret) but is funny because they still aren't my favorite band technically. Occasionally, I tell people I write a blog and it's fine but then I have to explain that it's about Coldplay but not because they're my favorite band, it's just because I started it on a whim. Then I think they get confused. Maybe by the end of this they will be my favorite band.

So moving on now, the fifth and sixth songs on the album are Us Against the World and M.M.I.X. M.M.I.X is just a short instrumental song. Us Against the World is a slow ballad from the perspective of Milo and Fly, the two main characters. One of the main points Coldplay made about the album in their press tour is that it is about the characters, "falling in love and escaping together," with a general theme of "love conquering all." (5) I talked a lot about the undertones of rebellion, and the universal ideas I believe they are capturing in the album about youth, solidarity, and urban resistance. Along with these ideas though, Coldplay was making a much broader and simpler point: in dark times, love can hold us together.

In Us Against the World, Chris Martin sings,

"Though chaos as it swirls // It's us against the world"

With a song title like Us Against the World, you could imagine a staunch, fast-paced, anthem in the vein of Hurts Like Heaven or Charlie Brown, instead you have a slow ballad, delivered almost mournfully by Chris Martin. In this song, I believe he's focusing less on the "World" aspect of "Us Against the World," and more on the "Us." This song isn't about the inequality or the oppression that these people experience, it's about the love and refuge they find in each other. 

"And if we could float away // Fly up to the surface and just start again // Lift off before trouble just erodes us in the rain"

In these lyrics Mylo and Fly aren't dreaming about taking down the government or joining the resistance, they're dreaming about escaping it all, running away together. They're finding meaning in each other, not in the political movement.

In this sense it reminds me a little bit of the song As Long As You're Mine from Wicked. Wicked is a movie very much about the political machinations of Oz. The main plot driver of the movie (although we tend to just remember the Elphaba-Glinda dynamic as the main thing) is the discrimination of the animals and the attempt to remove them from equal status in Oz. This is the reason Elphaba rejects Ozian society and becomes the Wicked Witch. For a moment though in this song, Elphaba isn't thinking about the inequality or the hardship, or the political ideas, she's just enjoying the love of Fiero. I don't think the song is necessarily implying that she would leave it all behind, abandon the cause for companionship, but it's worth noting how sometimes, all we want is love. Would it be selfish to run away because you found the one you love? Or is it just dumb to believe that movements and causes matter more than peaceful companionship?

The interlude M.M.I.X. comes between Us Against the World and the next song, Every Teardrop is a Waterfall (!). Exclamation point because this is another special song to me.

Screenshot from the music video of Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall

I've talked a fair bit about the urban setting, the themes of resistance and youth, and the uplifting pop-rock vibe of the album as a whole. Overall, I would say no song embodies all of those aspects better than Every Teardrop is a Waterfall. It also marks the end of the first half of the album, song 7 out of 14.

As I've mentioned, imagery of graffiti and buildings abounds in the artwork of Mylo Xyloto. While their created world, Silencia, is more of a techno-futuristic society, a lot of the places they filmed, as well as places they drew inspiration from were old. Graffiti in general, tends to accumulate as buildings and structures get older, lending a decaying feel to the urban area. While graffiti is often looked at as bad, evidence of social disorder or uncleanliness, it can also be looked at as a positive, artwork created by the people displaying their creativity or passion.

The music video for Every Teardrop is a Waterfall leans heavily into this graffiti aesthetic. Utilizing an interesting stop-motion technique, they use graffiti to visualize the story of the video, painting lyrics on the walls and ground, creating different backdrops and visuals, and filling the frames with color. The final scene (pictured above) was filmed at a derelict turn of the 20th century flour mill (6) which slowly fills with color (probably digitally) as they jam out to the final chorus. I think this image represents extremely well the main idea of the song and even somewhat of the album: urban decay but making it happy.

It's kind of a silly line, but basically correct. Urban decay is the process by which cities fall apart due to neglect, crime, or other factors.

From Wikipedia: an example of urban decay in Poland

Graffiti, which is normally cleared away from public surfaces, instead accumulates. Walls crack, dirt and dust spread, and public utilities start to fail. Urban decay is obviously not a good thing, it looks bad, it is a symptom of a failing city, and it can be dangerous, as safety measures are no longer taken, but even as cities decay, there are still people living in them. Often times, these people are victims of failing systems, bad economics, or discrimination and oppression. I think in this song and in some of the greater themes of the album, Coldplay is flipping the idea of an oppressed underclass on its head, imagining a joyful solidarity of people, united in song, color, and collective emotional outpouring.

Graffiti, normally a sign of decay and grime, is reappropriated in their view to a colorful splash of resistance. As in the lyrics of Hurts Like Heaven, the people are "armed with a spray can soul." Obviously, this is an idealistic look at things. The idea of the people coming together righteously to fight against oppression in this super aesthetic way is not likely, nor would it be without moral complications were it to happen in real life. But that's exactly what I've been getting at in these essays when it comes to Coldplay's music. They are always reaching for an ideal, for an aesthetic, for a frustratingly happy and even silly evocation of emotions.

And I think Every Teardrop is a Waterfall represents better than any other song on the album, all of these ideas.

An upbeat, pop-rock song, Every Teardrop opens with a light, fizzy guitar line that seems to ask a question as it goes a half-step down from A to G#, and then resolve it as it travels up to B. At risk of overanalyzing, it feels like the whole album is encased in this sequence, the question of survival, of resistance, and the resolution of music and rejoicing (7).

"I turn the music up," goes the first line, and right from that moment we have the message. In the midst of everything, we're turning up the music, we're escaping the oppression with song and joy.

"All the kids they dance // All the kids all night // Until Monday morning feels another life // I turn the music up // I'm on a roll this time // And heaven is in sight." 

While we might not always think of heaven as a weekend dance party, in a world like Silencia, where the people experience drudgery and oppression in work and daily life, what could be more joyful than dancing the night away, forgetting your troubles, and hiding away from the watchful eye of the government.

Verse 2:

"I turn the music up // I got my records on // From underneath the rubble sing a rebel song." 

 

This is the aesthetic, the idealistic. Living in the burnt-out city, with crumbling buildings and broken sidewalks, the people are still singing a rebel song from underneath. 

"But my heart is beating and my pulses start // Cathedrals in my heart."

One of my favorite lines in all of Coldplay's work, "Cathedrals in my heart," to me speaks to having a heart so big and wide, just like a spacious Gothic cathedral, that you almost can't contain it. The idea of cathedrals in your heart just evokes such interesting imagery as well.

Then the chorus:

"Every siren is a symphony // And every tear's a waterfall, is a waterfall."

Once again, the aesthetic. Why is a siren a symphony? In a world where the police are the arm of a totalitarian government, a siren is just as much a sound of crime, as it is of resistance. Every siren is the sound of the people rising up and fighting, a beautiful symphony.

And now the central line. There are a lot of different ways to interpret "every tear's a waterfall." I'm sure everyone who's listened to the song has their own personal one, whatever image that phrase conjures in their mind. The contributors to Genius, the lyrics interpretation website, prefer an interpretation of finding the good in the bad. Our tears can become waterfalls, not in the sense of a lot of liquid pouring down, but in the sense that waterfalls are beautiful, natural landmarks that stand the test of time. So too our tears can become "consecrated" to become something beautiful. I think this is a decent interpretation, but I prefer another one.

The interpretation I prefer is that "every tear's a waterfall" refers to an overwhelming tide of emotions that is being experienced by the people. As I said earlier, the themes of this song and album are (in my opinion) of a collective emotional outpouring, of grief, love, fear, courage, and more. "Every tear's a waterfall" is all of those things together, this magical ideal of multiplication, where you feel so purely, that your smallest of effort takes on the largest of meaning. In a sense, the phrase doesn't really make sense when you think about it, every teardrop is not just one singular tear, but an overwhelming cascade of liquid. What it means though I think, is when you feel so purely, grieve so strongly, that your heart empties completely. Just crying doesn't seem like enough, it's a waterfall.

The Bible, funnily enough, seems to capture the sentiment perfectly. Jeremiah 9:1 says,

"Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain daughter of my people!"

Of course the author of this passage doesn't wish his eyes contained as much water as a fountain, but it's the hyperbole that drives the point home, that captures the depth of feeling. Every teardrop is a waterfall, it's not just a tear, it's a waterfall. That's the collective power that I feel this song is imagining.

And that's Every Teardrop is a Waterfall, the song that, to me, captures in totality what Mylo Xyloto is.

Alright, well that's halfway through the album, but a little more than halfway through the post, since I don't think the second half has quite as much to talk about.

The second half of the album opens with a minor key guitar song called Major Minus that sort of pulls back from the highs of Every Teardrop. With the name Major Minus, it is pretty obviously a story (or "lore-based") song about the totalitarian leader of Silencia.

Major Minus, as featured in the "Hurts Like Heaven" music video

Quick aside, I realize I've used the term totalitarian many times now in this post without knowing myself exactly what it means. There's a lot of government words that we all have probably heard but we aren't clear on what the exact differences are between them. Dictatorship, authoritarian, totalitarian, autocratic, etc. Totalitarian, specifically, refers to a government that seeks to control the individual lives of its citizens, often through propaganda, secret police, and other means. Dictatorships, autocracies, and authoritarian regimes can exist without being totalitarian, or at least being less totalitarian. So in the world of Silencia, Major Minus would be classified as more totalitarian because he seeks complete control over the lives of the populace, not just political power.

Anyways, with lyrics like,

"They got one eye watching you // One eye on what you do // So be careful who it is you're talking to,"

it's pretty obviously just talking about life under the Major Minus regime on Silencia. Something funny is that this song has a lyric,

"Hear the crocodiles ticking 'round the world,"

which is a reference to the crocodile in Peter Pan that chases Captain Hook around. I'm not really sure why they put that lyric in, but it's funny that I was just talking about Peter Pan earlier and now it's being referenced in a song.

The last really big song on the album is #10, Princess of China. While this isn't one of my favorites, it is one that I've known for a long time. I remember my siblings and I bought this one on iTunes and enjoyed it for many years. A pop-rock jam filled with big beats and static-y guitars, as well as featuring Rihanna, of all people, the song was released as a single and saw mainstream airplay and success. Looking back at this song now, it's kind of a weird one. The song sort of mixes cultures in a way that offends post-2020 sensibilities, despite being titled Princess of China, there's no reference to China in any way. The lyrics of kings, princesses, and castles seem to reflect a European sensibility more than a Chinese one, and Rihanna, of course, is Barbadian (the term for someone from Barbados), not Chinese.

The music video is the most egregious offender though, shamelessly mixing cultures together with Chris Martin strolling through Chinese looking architecture,

Rihanna doing some Indian dance (with Chinese writing in the background),

Ninjas fighting in the background (I kid you not),

and to top it all off, Chris Martin and Rihanna, holding European-style swords, flying in like Chinese Wuxia warriors.

I really don't know what they were thinking when they made it.

I don't think it's that big of a deal, it's a little offensive, maybe, but with Coldplay you know they did it with the best of intentions (honoring and paying homage to different cultures), and it was a different time in 2011. How to represent other cultures and races that aren't your own remains an ongoing question today. A few years ago, society swung in a very strict direction and we're still living in the aftermath of that. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with playing around with cultural imagery, even if it's not technically your own, but I think the wrong comes in if people feel "othered," disrespected, or otherwise hurt in some way. In a world where we all were on equal footing and lived in mutual respect, then maybe we could move past this, but "until then," it's best not to play around too much.

Releasing a poppy, dance-y song like this while also featuring one of the biggest pop singers of the era was a big sign of Coldplay's drive to expand musically.

While this song was mostly well-received, critics pointed out a bit of shamelessness in their search for chart success, specifically with this one, and Paradise. One reviewer wrote,

"Coldplay seem hell-bent on becoming even bigger than they already are. ‘Paradise’, and now ‘Princess Of China’, are nothing if not single-minded in their naked quest for full-spectrum mainstream dominance." (8)

Another one (who wasn't a fan of their previous two albums) said,

"Coldplay began as a melancholy Brit-rock band with a gift for hooks. The band lost its way somewhat through X&Y and Viva La Vida—which aren’t bad so much as forgettable—but it finds a new path to mojo here. That occasionally results in pop cheese, but those concerned by Coldplay’s clear interest in massive popularity probably jumped ship years ago." (9)

This post is already long enough, so I can't really dive into pop music and analyze their shifts and motivations here. Suffice it to say then that I don't think they were doing anything very different than in their previous evolutions and artistic choices. As I wrote a few posts ago, they've always been upfront about spreading positive messages, and outside of Viva la Vida perhaps, their music has never been boundary-pushing in the way that music critics (or snobs) want them to be. They make music that appeals to lots of people, and that's just what they're good at.

I do agree that style-wise this album was as big a shift as ever in their music, and at this point, they barely resembled their original selves at all. If you liked Coldplay for what they were back in 2000, then I understand why you might have turned on them. But if you liked Coldplay for who they were, then I think they've stayed true to that. All they've done since is refine and focus their message, and attempt new ways of expressing themselves artistically.

While chasing trends and following the mainstream can be negative, and I believe to some extent the band was changing in an attempt to stay relevant, I think it's underrated how difficult it is to change and evolve, and how there is its own form of artistic integrity in doing so. I don't think it would be more honest to "who they are," if they just released Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head over and over again for 20 years, especially when they had a genuine desire to experiment. And one line I kept thinking over and over again while writing this was, if you had the chance to work with Rihanna, would you turn her down just because you're not a "pop" band? Of course not.

Ultimately, there are fair criticisms to make of Coldplay and their evolution over the years, and I may address some of them in the future. For this post though, I'll just say that I like Mylo Xyloto, and I don't think it's a betrayal of who they were, or an artistic failure by any means.

The final three songs on Mylo Xyloto are Up in Flames, Don't Let it Break Your Heart, and Up with the Birds (there's also a 30 second interlude).

Up in Flames is a simple piano-and-beat song with a driving rhythm that I've even seen described as "dubstep." It's kind of nice. It reminds me a bit of Ghost Stories, their next album, in 2014, which makes me wonder if this song was sort of a precursor to the next direction they would choose to go in.

Don't Let it Break Your Heart is more of a fast-paced banger, with a prominent guitar squeal, similar to some of my favorites on the album like Hurts Like Heaven and Every Teardrop is a Waterfall. It doesn't jump up into that tier for me though, the melody and composition don't feel as instantly iconic as the other's do. Lyrically there's also a lot less going on, just about not letting failure, or exhaustion break your heart, give up hope. In context, it's probably a song from Mylo to Fly or vice versa, an encouragement to keep up the fight. It's honestly not bad, just not one of my favorites.

The FINAL song on the album, or, as Genius puts it, "the grand finale to Coldplay’s modern-day rock opera Mylo Xyloto," is called Up with the Birds.

Coming in at 3:44, Up with the Birds is a healthy finisher to the glory of what is Mylo Xyloto. I originally hadn't ever heard this song, and it wasn't until I listened to it a second time while writing this section that I realized how much I liked it. Kind of half-"Us Against the World", half-"Every Teardrop is a Waterfall," it starts out slow, before speeding into a sort of melancholy, yet triumphant finish. It's got that classic, syrupy electric guitar that is on all of my favorite songs from the album.

Genius (the lyrics website), states that the song is about the death of Mylo. He goes "up with the birds," departing this realm, floating above, and saying, "But I know, one day // Good things are coming our way." "Up with the birds" is a nice metaphor. Mylo is relieved from the fight, released from the pain. Still believing, still striving, still hoping, but onto a new place, a higher place, a place of rest.

I don't think the song only has to be about his death, but I like that as a finish. Not to get too deep, but death is a serious thing, and even in a silly little project like this, writing about Coldplay of all things, it makes you think. I think it's a good finish to the album, appropriately serious, but approaching it in that idealistic, Coldplay way. Mylo passes on, but his soul stays around, "float[ing] all over the world just to see her again." I feel like they're expressing an idea that both respects the fight, and acknowledges the moving on, the rising above. The song isn't my favorite closer, or song on the album overall, but it's pretty good.

To close, I'll just say that I messed up and went slightly out of order, there's a couple songs that Coldplay released in the run-up to Mylo Xyloto that I accidentally skipped over. I started the post and just jumped right into the album and couldn't really find a place to go back. And then the post was getting too long to include extra stuff in the end, so I'll have to go back and do those later.

THE END

1. Why the YA dystopia fad launched, soared, crashed, and burned;

2. dystopia definition - Search

3. ALAN v40n2 - Understanding the Appeal of Dystopian Young Adult Fiction | Virginia Tech Scholarly Communication University Libraries

4. Every Coldplay song ranked in order of greatness

5. Mylo Xyloto - Wikipedia

6. Millennium Mills - Wikipedia

7. Interestingly, the opening notes are not an original Coldplay creation, they come from a song called "I Go to Rio", a 1976 disco song by an Australian musician named Peter Allen. The funny thing is, a 1990 German house song called "Ritmo de la noche" also uses those same chords, and people accused Coldplay of plagiarizing both songs upon release. Obviously if they did plagiarize, it only could have been one of them. The funniest thing though, is that Coldplay didn't learn the music from either song, but from the soundtrack of the movie Biutiful (2010), which took elements of "I Go to Rio" in making the music for a club scene. They ended up officially crediting Peter Allen and his cowriter Adrienne Anderson on the song.

8. Coldplay feat. Rihanna, 'Princess Of China' - Review

9. Coldplay: Mylo Xyloto

Songs Listened To:

Mylo Xyloto (LP), October 24, 2011