Why don't I like Coldplay? An investigation
Excellent piece by Sasha Frere-Jones in The New Yorker: It’s hard to deal with vexingly adequate music. In 2008, I ended up somewhere beyond vexed after witnessing an evening of Chris Martin foofing about and dispensing false modesty like it was a donation to the Red Cross. In 2005, Jon Pareles spanked Martin in an article called “The Case Against Coldplay,” in which he called them “the most insufferable band of the decade.”
But it’s unhealthy to hang on to vexations. According to Nielsen SoundScan, Coldplay have sold 15,124,000 albums in America since their début in 2000. For the sake of comparison, here is the number of albums sold by other acts in roughly the same time frame:
Train—6,565,000 Rihanna—7,312,000 Maroon 5—8,847,000 Radiohead—10,884,000 Beyonce—12,452,000
In the age of the dying musical commodity (which is not the age of music dying), fifteen million is a big number. So after Coldplay’s new album, “Mylo Xyloto,” leaked on Monday, I spent a few days with it. I wanted to pin down why I usually love “Clocks” but generally can’t stand more than a few minutes of the band, even though millions of listeners can. Here is my unscientific effort to measure the band’s pros and cons:
1. Chris Martin, Writer. +14
He can write a catchy melody. See “Paradise,” an immensely stupid song with an elegant and confident verse and chorus line, slightly reminiscent of a prime Noel Gallagher moment.
2. Chris Martin, Singer. +2
Despite the huggable-park-ranger schtick, Martin sings clearly and without much coloring or dynamic bother. When he writes a good line, he delivers it straight, which aids the listener who will be subjected to the song at least once a day for the next six months (unless the listener chooses to work from home).
3. Chris Martin, Human Being Who Moves. -678
Nobody in popular music is more annoying to watch. What is he doing with his body? Ever? Is he in The Zone? (It’s even annoying when he shaves). Martin rarely walks when he has the option to skip.
4. The “Mom’s On Facebook!” Effect. -12
It’s nice that the band figured out how to make a decent video. (If you’re pressed for time, “Paradise” depicts a man in an elephant suit who escapes from a zoo, rides a unicycle, stows away on a plane, and joins a band in South Africa.) The problem is that this video is a pastiche of videos Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze made fifteen years ago. Coldplay’s inability to inhabit their time in any convincing way just makes me think that they spend months at a time on rowing machines and Stratego.
5. U2. -346
Seven out of ten times, Coldplay sound almost exactly like U2—the U2 that exists now, not the wiry, feral U2 of 1980 (which would be a decent idea). U2 have not broken up. This is inefficient. Coldplay should consider copying Big Star or The Monkees.
6. “Oh who would ever want to be king?” -10
Vagueness in song lyrics—blame whoever you want: Bob Dylan, indie rock, the one bad Beatles song, Steve Jobs—is now no big deal, even for a Top Ten act. So even though Martin told Billboard that “Mylo Xyloto” contains “a story…loosely a kind of romance in an oppressive environment,” the lyrics never rise above the level of foggy, hopeful clichés that have been placed in an order. “Paradise” is about a girl who is having a very bad day, and the lyrics include both imagery cribbed from embroidered throw pillows and a burp of internal branding (the words of the album’s second single contain the title of the first single): “Life goes on, it gets so heavy / the wheel breaks the butterfly / every tear a waterfall / in the night the stormy night she’ll close her eyes / in the night the stormy night away she’d fly.” It is never made clear if our hero, Mylo, can use his musical toes to make the rain go away. (This list of imagined “Mylo Xyloto” song meanings by Amanda Dobbins is better than the actual album by a factor of eight.) Martin likely knows this about himself—he is epically self-deprecating—which is perhaps why so many songs end using “whoa” and “ah” as a substitute for language.
The tunes are there, usually three to an album, but that is something you could say of even their weakest contemporaries, like Maroon 5. What puts them up into some higher level of accessibility must be an averaging of Martin’s guarantee to never shock or offend anyone—which parents value—and the toy soldier brand of pageantry and celebration that underpins so many songs. Coldplay keep throwing massive parades for themselves, without explanation or merit. Some folks just love confetti.