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Rating: It's Christmas Eve, just a few hours before the stroke of midnight, and I find myself making the usual account of the annual invasion of Christmas singles. I realize that they are becoming more and more obnoxious and irritating, even more so than the classics ("Do They Know It's Christmas" & Co.) that the radios play for us ad nauseam; even Bob Geldof, the author of many of these, has admitted to having written some true monstrosities in music history.
The (anticipated?) return of Coldplay arrives precisely with a ballad dedicated to Christmas. Initially, there were rumors of a whole compilation dedicated to it, while (fortunately) Chris Martin's band released only one single, "Christmas Lights," and probably in 2011, an album of new songs will be released.
The name of the immense Brian Eno appears in the production, who practically alone can bring quality (listen to the albums he produced for Coldplay or U2), but the result this time leaves a lot to be desired: "Christmas Lights" is a flat, empty ballad, in the classic Coldplay style, starting with piano chords, then adding Martin's voice, which sings some truly embarrassing words at points ("When you're still waiting for the snow, it doesn't feel like Christmas at all"); it lacks originality, depth, and adds nothing more than the myriad of Christmas tunes, but it’s at the 2:26 mark that disaster strikes: at first, I didn’t understand and tried to listen again, but at this point in the song everyone seems to go offbeat, perhaps trying to create some effect, a slowdown that evidently went really wrong.
After the calamity produced by Train for Coca-Cola, Chris Martin joins the list of irritating songs with a monotonous and soporific piece, a symbol of the hypocrisy and false good intentions that emerge as we get closer to December 25th.
As far as I'm concerned, I only save "Last Christmas" by Wham! The rest can be easily discarded.
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