Coldplay
Music Of The Spheres

It has become fashionable to speak ill of Coldplay, as criticisms always cluster under every post dedicated to them. But are we sure these are truly deserved? Have people really listened to, delved into, and analyzed the band? Or have they simply "heard" them? Let’s dig deeper.

"Music of the Spheres" is the stylistic complement closely related in time to "Everyday Life," much in the same way "A Head Full of Dreams" was to "Ghost Stories." In both cases, it’s a very pop and immediate record that comes shortly after a more difficult and refined one, practically as a response. By analyzing Coldplay's artistic journey, two fundamental periods can be recognized: in the first, we have a band of intimate electroacoustic pop, not exactly hitting you at first impact, yet able to carve out significant chart positions; the fourth album "Viva la Vida" acts as the link between the two periods, where something catchy starts to be felt, but it’s fundamentally the subsequent "Mylo Xyloto" that definitively inaugurates the Coldplay "for everyone," for those who don’t want to listen, for the ones whose busts dance in the stadium and the pre-packaged choruses ready to be sung even by the most tone-deaf. But as we just said... in this phase of easy appeal, there are still darker albums, so one can say this "easy" era never truly existed. This alone would suffice to assert that Coldplay are not exactly the ideal band to ridicule, but even if we analyze what we find within each of these presumed commercial works, we realize we are putting the wrong band in the dock.

So let’s delve into the network of "Music of the Spheres." We all agree it’s a pop album; it fundamentally consists of tracks that perform very well on the radio. Whether it's flat and uninteresting music like much of the mainstream production, I have strong doubts; in fact, I exclude it. What’s striking is the very '80s atmosphere characterizing several tracks. The '80s might be the most maligned period in recent musical history, mainly by those snobs who refuse to acknowledge that even pop music can have strong creative and artistic potential and who see synthesizers as impurities rather than opportunities; a criticized period but always somehow resurfaced, as it has also happened in recent years, between high waists, shoulder pads, and oversized jackets. Those were the years when sounds were indeed artificial but meticulously crafted and truly made a difference, unlike what has happened in the last twenty years where commercial music is an oligarchy of sparse and overwhelming beats and flat, hardly audible sounds. Coldplay here take that kind of clear and flamboyant sound and redesign it in a modern key, drawing heavily from synth-pop and AOR and updating it all. Starting already with the leading single "Higher Power": its sounds are like flashes of light turning on intermittently, seemingly depicting fireflies lighting up the night. "Humankind" and "Infinity Sign" are halfway between a synth-pop track and a stadium anthem, alternating hypnotic synth loops with strikingly glaring keyboards of evident AOR extraction, the former resembling a sort of pop version of Van Halen’s "Jump." "My Universe" – sung together with the South Korean BTS and featuring Korean verses within it – draws from disco and funk, with sonorities straddling the '70s and '80s, with delicate touches of guitar and bass in the verses before unleashing the synths at full power in the chorus. These are the poppiest songs possible, which do not lose sight of the bank balance, but they surely have a sound, the sounds are heard, well perceived and well-studied, they are tracks aiming to be direct and captivating but seek to maintain a certain level of musical dignity.

To be honest, tracks that could be labeled as "ordinary" end here, at most adding the ballad "Let Somebody Go" (sung in a duet with Selena Gomez), endowed with good emotional depth yet still far from being particularly moving; the rest, practically most of the album, is rich in peculiar things, some even capable of questioning the commercial nature of the record. To begin with, "People of the Pride" has a particularly intriguing approach: it’s a hard rock and blues ride but Coldplay manage to make it sound strictly pop, so clean and light that you wouldn’t even consider it a rock track. "Biutyful" is also quite strange, a light guitar with a jazzy touch and a childlike voice, a kind of Europeanized bossa nova that certainly doesn’t go unnoticed. But to venture into truly unexplored territories, one must listen to "Human Heart": if in the previous album there was "When I Need a Friend," they now play the gospel card again, with a nocturnal and haunting a cappella melody, an experiment that might vaguely recall Imogen Heap’s "Hide and Seek," certainly not a track designed to top the charts.

The album also reveals a celestial or even spatial atmosphere (let’s not forget it's a concept album set in an imaginary solar system), confirmed by some brief cosmic interludes; honestly, they could have spared us "Music of the Spheres II," while the first "Music of the Spheres" and "Alien Choir" are indeed truly beautiful, choral and celestial bursts, as if Coldplay wanted to suggest not to dismiss the connecting interludes as irrelevant and that behind these, small masterpieces might be hiding.

The ultimate rebuttal, however, comes at the end. To officially sanction Coldplay’s skill as composers, they place a 10-minute track, "Coloratura." Who knows how many have been surprised to see such a length, accustomed as they are to the canonical 3-4 minutes, never having ventured into progressive or experimental music territories; and how many times have we wondered why the vast majority of songs have that standard duration... David Byrne in his "How Music Works" analyzes how the physical format has influenced composition over time and identifies the hypothesis that the spread of 78s and 45s and the necessity to fit the track on one side of the record have probably dictated this format, though not excluding that in the past popular compositions could be longer. Returning to the track, Coldplay again do not want to tread on already-heard paths, these 10 minutes aren’t a sterile attempt to ape the usual progressive rock composition, it’s an original composition perfectly mixing psychedelia and classical music, with delicate piano parts, sparkling strings, and hallucinogenic harps. Choosing it as a single is an act of courage, a way to send a message: music isn’t just made of danceable songs but also of sound journeys where one shouldn’t fear to venture, music is also exploration and experimentation, you must broaden your horizons and change your concept of music.

So? What’s the point of this long discussion? Simply to affirm that Coldplay isn’t exactly the band to target. They are a pop band at most, but they do it judiciously, and they nevertheless know how to go further, even surprise. The only arguably criticizable album, where the sound truly flattened and lowered to commercial compromise, was "Mylo Xyloto," but even there, the discussion is long, since there was also a good handful of deeper and more intense tracks. My advice remains: choose other bands and artists to take issue with.