With the help of super producer Max Martin - who previously worked with the band on 2019 singles "Orphans" and "Champion of the World" - the quartet sound more cohesive than they've been in years, benefitting from a single producer's vision in a similar fashion to what Brian Eno pulled off with Viva La Vida.
Their most unabashedly pop-centric and optimistic album to date, this sci-fi concept piece is the spiritual successor to technicolor predecessors Mylo Xyloto and A Head Full of Dreams - outpacing both with its sharp focus and lean runtime - while maintaining the boundary-pushing energy heard on the Kaleidoscope EP and Everyday Life. Expanding upon the band's question of "What would our music sound like across the universe?" they created a world filled with alien outcasts, invented languages, and fictional planets, freeing themselves from the bounds of earthly genre restrictions in the process.
But no number of the band is as passionately involved as with Fix You.Transmitting their stadium-sized pop anthems across an imaginary solar system, Coldplay go intergalactic with their shimmering ninth set, Music of the Spheres. Anyone who has ever attended a Coldplay concert knows that every song is loudly sung by almost the entire audience. The church organ that is so characteristic of Fix You comes from an old keyboard that Chris Martin’s father-in-law had given to his daughter Gwyneth Paltrow. It is the only Coldplay song in which the four band members sing simultaneously. Those who have taken dance lessons in recent years will probably know the special salsa make-up of Clocks from Buena Vista Social Club.įix You was the second single from the X&Y album from 2005. In Flanders, by the way, Clocks did not even appear in the charts. With Clocks, Coldplay finally broke through in 2003 and scored a major hit in the Netherlands with a second place in the single Top 40. The song was added to the album at the end of the recordings of A Rush or Blood to the Head. Striking about the song Vive La Vida is the absence of a dominant piano that is so characteristic of Coldplay songs, and the emphasis is instead placed on vocals, string instruments and bass guitar.Ĭlocks is the biggest hit of the breakthrough album A Rush or Blood to the Head from 2002 and perhaps the best known song by Coldplay. Vive La Vida remained at number four in Flanders. The title track was the second single from Viva la Vida (or Death and All His Friends), which reached the highest position in the hit parade in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, or precisely because of this, this album, released in 2008, became the best-selling Coldplay album so far in the Netherlands and Flanders (three times Platinum in both countries). This band’s fourth album was turned on more strongly and as a result many songs sounded more bombastic than those from earlier albums.
With the album produced by Brian Eno Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, Coldplay broke somewhat with the sound of the previous albums. Music magazine Q described The Scientist as a great gift for filmmakers, because it is a modern yet classic song and therefore fits perfectly under sensitive scenes in feature films. The Scientist was released a few months after In My Place, but got stuck in the tip parade in both the Netherlands and Flanders. This album reached third place in both the Dutch Album Top 100 and the Flemish Ultratop 200 Albums. Just like number two Clocks and number six In My Place, The Scientist also comes from the second album by Coldplay, the A Rush of Blood to the Head, which was released in 2002.