Megahit or Long Boring Whine? Independent UK writers argue about Coldplay's new album

[marmar]

Niall Doherty and Hugh Montgomery: One thinks Coldplay's latest album is a 'megahit', the other, one long boring whine...
On the eve of a fifth album, two writers clash horns over the band

Sunday, 23 October 2011


Hugh Is it a mosquito? Or a dodgy refrigerator? No, that faint whine you hear is just the just sound of a new Coldplay album hoving into view. In the 11 years since their breakout hit "Yellow", four middle-class young men who met at university have become Britain's biggest and blandest band, achieving more than 40 million album sales and worldwide fame along the way – but the more their stature has changed, the more their music has stayed the same.

Niall Biggest doesn't necessarily mean blandest, Hugh. But perhaps you're mistaking over-familiarity with blandness, because Coldplay write the sort of songs that deserve to be played over and over. Unless you've been trapped in a cage for the past decade, you'll know at least two songs from each of their four albums (the fifth, Mylo Xyloto, is out tomorrow). Even if you don't know, you know. "Yellow", "Trouble", "In My Place", "Clocks", "Talk", "Fix You", "Viva La Vida"... I've got big anthems on my side.

Hugh How right you are, Niall: biggest doesn't necessarily mean blandest. It's just in this case we have an act whose success is predicated on vacuity. To wit: Chris Martin's monotonously wistful, quasi-ethereal vocals. The back-of-a-postcard platitudes. And that anodyne mixture of sorrow and uplift, in which each emotion serves to cancel the other out. All of which conspires to make those anthems as offensively inoffensive as they are melodic.

Niall I'm not going to pretend that Chris Martin will be releasing a Jarvis Cocker-esque poetry collection of his lyrics in years to come, but then neither is he. Wistful, ethereal vocals, but also melodic? Sounds to me like you're describing left-field pop music, rather than just rock music – and there's quite a difference. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/niall-doherty-and-hugh-montgomery-one-thinks-coldplays-latest-album-is-a-megahit-the-other-one-long-boring-whine-2374655.html

[hlthe2b]

1. Anyone heard it yet? Who is "right?"

Coldplay is really memorable for the unique riffs in a number of its songs.... I have about six or eight songs I really like and still happy to keep in at least occasional rotation.

But, then again, I guess "I'm over the hill", since I only like about 10% (or probably less) of any new music I hear... :shrug:

[Cirque du So-What]

2. I come down on the side of 'long, boring whine'

I admit to having listened a bit to Coldplay early on, finding a couple of their hit tunes catchy, but all of their subsequent arrangements have left me unimpressed. I agree with the critics: vacuous pap.

On edit: I speak from experience, having endured that hurdy-gurdy grinding out musical-like noises for an entire morning last week on NBC's Today show.

[Lint Head]

3. S.O.S.