With U2 and Coldplay (I haven't heard much of Talking Heads) his production technique is usually very innovative and has incorporated ambient synth sound textures and also he is a good at facilitating decision making and strategies in the creative process
Yes, “...Other musicians inspired by Oblique Strategies include the British band Coldplay, said to have used the cards when recording their 2008 Brian Eno-produced album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends...” I’ve always thought it’s a very wise technique to help a creative artist break through that temporary phase, when they are struggling artistically.
Don't want to enter a thread and "make it about me," but there are personal connections. Point of reference: I'm too old to care about who is or isn't cool to like. Want to pay attention to contemporary acts. Plenty of 'cool' acts came to my attention over the last decade. If they happen to be popular, so what? Coldplay had their day. Here's the personal connection: have their entire catalog. This includes Blu Ray of A Head Full of Dreams and all concerts. This is for the fellow audiophiles watching. (Big mistake at not releasing the Viva La Vita Live concert in Toronto)! Now here's the catch-all, I won, with 20 other Sirius-XM listeners, a Town Hall contest for Mylo Xlyto. During the program Chris Martin addressed the main issue head on. He said that they realize that there are people, who don't like it. Coldplay are doing this for the people who do! Bottome line is that they know that there's resistance, but so what? Maybe they've gone too commercial. Again, so what? Anybody over 35 is probably not the best person to reply, but Coldplay understands where they stand in the scheme of things. Having said that, the most recent album certainly wasn't geared toward the mainstream, and any potential tour is on indefinite hold.
I think my favourite oblique strategy card is 'faced with a choice, do both' or 'honour they mistake as a hidden intention'
Viva La Vida is their magnum opus IMHO. Much credit goes to Brian Eno. The first 30 seconds of Viva La Vida (the album) = the first 30 seconds of Mylo Xyloto = the first 30 seconds of The Joshua Tree.
Buy the first two - Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head - and the Viva La Vida. The rest forget about. Parachutes is a promising debut with some real subtle beauty to it. Don't Panic has real Jeff Buckley vibes, and Shiver, Sparks, Everything's Not Lost and the hidden track Life is For Living, are all great! And you get Yellow, too. A Rush of Blood to the Head is Coldplay trying to remake The Bends in a lot of places, but it's chock full of fantastic songs--In My Place, The Scientist, Clocks, A Whisper, Amsterdam--as the band stretches their sound a bit. This is the LP where Chris Martin's voice sounds the best, and for the most part it is still 5 guys playing instruments in a room together. X&Y is Rush redux with more electronics and less quality songs. Though Fix You is a well-made tear-jerker with a cool video. Pass. Viva La Vida is very "of a piece", a good listen all the way through. Eno produced a lot of it, and its got beautiful songs--42, Lovers in Japan, Violet Hill, Strawberry Swing, Death and All His Friends. If you like this LP, check out the long EP called Prospekt's March which is more like a mini-album with the same feel, and features "Lost" from Viva, but it's an interesting version with Jay-Z. After Viva, eh, I really fell off the Coldplay wagon. They seemed to veer way into shallow pop for my taste, and it was jarring considering their first two records especially but also because I had hoped the Eno collaboration would continue and pull them into more interesting territory of soundscapes and some Bowie/Talking Heads vibes... These guys started out with a lot of promise, but they just ran out of things to say and interesting musical paths to explore. Not the greatest sin. It's just what happens to many. Three good albums, and the rest are blah. Coldplay never found their "Nigel Godrich" the perfect producer match to push them and grow with them in the right direction. Eno could have been that for the second act of their career but apparently he and Martin clashed. I think it became fashionable in the 00s to make fun of any rock band that had mega hits among the cooler hip hop and rap stars of the day, and with Chris Martin and the band not having any rock star energy or street cred at all, they were very easy targets--even with JAY-Z in their corner. But taken on its own, their early music is good and its accessible, and I can see why so many people enjoyed it.
I can’t go into too much detail as I am not a big follower but The Scientist, Yellow and some other songs are really good, so basically I don’t get the hate
Like others, I’m a big fan of the first two and most of Viva la Vida. I listened to the new one once through and was very pleasantly surprised. Some interesting explorations there mixed in with more typical Chris Martin fare. I think I’ll check it out again right now
The three big singles-Yellow, Clocks, and the one about when they ruled the word-awesome. Otherwise, pretentious and boring.
My wife was (and probably still is) a big fan, so I bought tickets for us to see them at TD Garden in Boston about 10 years ago (a birthday present for her). I had no expectations; I listened to a few tracks and didn't find them disagreeable at all, but I wasn't into them, as it were. I will say that they put on a very well put together show and their musicianship was quite good. Being a bass player primarily, I wasn't wowed by the bass player, but he was very solid and professional. They had a few gimmicky things (like moving around the arena on various elevated platforms for the encore, as I remember), but all and all an enjoyable time was had by all. I will say that the highlight of the night was when an entourage entered the arena just before the show started, down and to our left (through the Zamboni doors; we were lower loge near the left wing corner where the Broons shoot 2x, just off of stage right) and to our surprise, Jerry Seinfeld and his wife, Blythe Danner, Gwyneth Paltrow and Stephen Spielberg trotted up the aisle right next to me and sat a couple of rows behind us. I nudged my wife and said "you do realize that I got us better tickets than Seinfeld and Spielberg, right?"
I can remember Hugh Cornwell (ex-the Stranglers) describing A Rush Of Blood To The Head as ‘genius’. They had a lot of credibility in the early 2000s - although they were hyped by a major label, they still had a sort of ‘underground’ appeal. I can remember the posters for Parachutes going up all over London. I’d never heard of the band before but suddenly they were everywhere. I suppose you could say they were victims of ‘REM Syndrome.’ Other non-musical factors complicated the picture: when the frontman became involved with a high-profile female celebrity, I think the the band’s credibility took a hit, as it made him (and, by extension, them) into tabloid fodder. The same thing happened a few years alter to Muse (but the precedent was set by the Gene Simmons-Cher relationship; Faye Dunaway’s marriage to Peter Wolf didn’t seem to have any effect on the profile of the J Geils Band).
When I was at college I remember when Coldplay first hit the scene with Parachutes - they were up there with Radiohead in terms of what pretentious, middle class, Guardian reading college students liked at the time. Radiohead then disappeared up their own backsides with Kid A and became even more fashionable with that set 'cos they were sooo deep, man. Coldplay went for more commercial heights and became unfashionable, it became trendy to bash them and so the trend has continued. Not a huge fan of either group but there is no doubting that Coldplay have done some fantastic songs and they have great chops in that respect. In fact, I may give Viva La Vida a try since many seem to rate it.
Clodplay? Never could stand them. All that generic surging, attempts to emulate some geuine emotion and missing, the general insipid-ness (which Alan McGee thoroughly nailed): why? As for their ubiquity (I recall being driven screaming from shops in York as they were all playing whatever current Clodplay single), check out Mitch Benn's delightful spoof - Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Nowadays.
That's not by chance. During the Townhall with Coldplay program, my question was about influences. A concert was shown on one of cable/satellite networks around 15 years ago. They'd mentioned how "Running Up that Hill" by Kate Bush served as something of an inspiration for "Speed of Sound." This was asked to see if there were others. Chris Martin said that there was nothing else as specific. Guy Berryman added later that they did like Jeff Buckley. So, there you have it. In regard to Eno, he told them to seek out a wide variety of potential influences. He also encouraged them to focus on singing. That was interesting, as Eno tends to be associate more with atmospherics.
I forgot to mention the album "Ghost Stories" released in 2014. They took me by surprise... It's a nice album. Of course, I didn't like the single "A Sky Full of Stars” that seemed like an outtake of Mylo Xyloto... The previous year, the band composed the excellent single "Atlas" that integrated the soundtrack of the "The Hunger Games" movie and that left clues about the sound that would come to have "Ghost Stories".
I like pretty much every Coldplay record I've ever heard, and when I've seen them on telly they've been great, too. My wife calls them my 'guilty pleasure', but actually I don't feel guilty about liking them at all. As someone posted upthread, a Greatest hits comp would show just how many great records they've made. I like the tone of Chris Martin's voice, and their songs are crammed with hooks. What else do you want from a pop record? My favourite might be the one with the Chainsmokers. Killer track.
I think their first four albums are excellent, with Viva La Vida being their best and boldest. Everything after that turned into over-cooked pop music that just doesn't resonate with me, though Ghost Stories and Everyday Life are both pretty decent. I gave Parachutes a spin for the first time in a while the other night and was struck by just how beautiful and simple it is. It's got a nice, intimate sound with great production and beautiful melodies. I'd like to see the band strip everything down and venture down that road again. "Warning Sign" remains my favorite song of theirs. What a stunner that one is!
I like some of their songs very much, but the tracks are mainly marginal to their discography, some obscure B-sides or EP tracks. I discovered them recently through a friend who is a huge fan. That's why I can't say I'm disappointed by their 'going commercial" as I don't have this perspective. However, I can easily understand people who felt "betrayed" after the first two albums, I generally find the guitar-driven songs much better than the synth-based ones. Still, there would be at least one great song on each album for me to find. My current top 10: 1. I Bloom Blaum 2. Daylight (ha, the main motif is a blatant Within You Without You rip-off, but I actually find it rather endearing, and I love the good old mellotron on it!) 3. One I Love 4. I Ran Away 5. Old Friends 6. Warning Sign 7. What If 8. 'Til Kingdom Come 9. All I Can Think About Is You 10. Oceans What else? Chris Martin is a very good lyricist. And for a huge Moody Blues fan it's not difficult to find some parallels in Coldplay's... approach (?)
Rush Of Blood to the Head is a great, no fantastic album, especially that title track. The debut album showed promise and reminded me a bit of the Radiohead debut, probably better actually. It’s interesting to see how some bands take off towards greatness and others are swallowed by the commercial music machine, and I don’t necessarily think Coldplay realised that was happening to them as they swan dived into blandness and celebrity....
A very "female" band indeed, and very much of its time, I mean these feminin times.. Well that doesn't count for much IMO.
Coming into a Coldplay thread and saying "I only like the first album..." is like when someone comes into a R.E.M. thread and says "Murmur is the only good thing they did..." etc. etc. like they were all listening to R.E.M. when that was released, its total nonsense. However Coldplay where already quite well known and had lots of radio play in the UK by the time the first album hit the shelves. I delved into the 2nd album a bit, but didn't like it Jo Whiley's constant crowing on Coldplay, and name-dropping Chris Martin any chance she gets, is cringeworthy beyond the infinite. Coldplay where the best band that could have done the entire Paralympics closing ceremony, watched most of that and they were great in the spirit of things. The following video has a huge amount of context around it, but it's an excellent version of Fix You from the Young@Heart chorus. If you watch it in context of the entire documentary it stays with you forever YouTube
