The British band around the charismatic singer Chris Martin has released a new album. “Moon Music” is an attempt to please everyone.
Chris Martin and his fellow musicians are gradually looking towards the end of Coldplay – here on July 12, 2024 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.
Roberto Panucci / Corbis / Getty
They wanted to go high into anthemic spheres. And yet in recent years things have gone down the drain musically, into the maelstrom of trends and through the valley of commerce further into the broad mainstream, which has maneuvered Coldplay into the oceanic abyss in which the band finds themselves on their new album “Music of the Spheres Vol. II: Moon Music”.
At Coldplay, musical mission and business acumen gradually merged into a fatal greed that played out in ever larger halls and stadiums. The songs became simpler and simpler. The sound was all the more colorful and bombastic, which was supposed to get the band and audience in the mood for a shared piety.
The dramatic decline is a reminder of a basic problem: a musical profile is actually characterized by consciously distancing oneself from certain traditions and trends. But pop stars like Coldplay want to captivate many fans, ideally all of humanity, with pleasing mixtures.
Happy do-gooders
A song on “Moon Music” is appropriately titled “We Pray” – a strange hybrid of prayer and trashy beats: the well-intentioned is touched upon with a lot of exuberance. The song of praise is full of surging strings, with a fat beat pounding deep beneath it. Angelic voices can be heard in the distance, then Chris Martin also raises his voice. He prays that he could do his best, that his brothers would be blessed, that his sins would be forgiven, that we would all remain humble and honest. And when at some point he can’t think of anything else, he warbles “la la la”.
He is supported in his pop prayer by a diverse selection of stars – from the British rapper Little Simz to the Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna and the Argentinian actress Tini to the Nigerian Afrobeats superstar Burna Boy. They all get a short solo. In the video for the song, they present themselves as a cheerful front of do-gooders. But that only makes the shallow, sacred hit song even more erratic.
Coldplay was never one of the avant-garde of cool, but they were definitely a respectable band. The four Brits made their way into the charts in the 2000s as a late indie and Britpop group with a gentle style, which was, however, roughened up to rock in hits like “Yellow” and “In My Place”. On their first albums they defined their own sound, which soon proved to be a problem. Her career continued to rise above the peak of her abilities. With their success behind them, they increasingly felt the gravity of the market.
Coldplay then managed to renew and develop their own sound. But this development was fatal for the musicians. But not for Chris Martin. The singer could always rely on his roaring organ. And even in the cheapest tearjerkers he achieves an enthusiastic or elegiac effect with his throaty singing, which breaks into falsetto at moving moments. The laughing Stoic usually seems immune to the feelings he conjures up.
While the charismatic frontman became more and more dominant in the band due to stylistic adjustments, the importance of his colleagues decreased. At the beginning, Coldplay was a group of friends who were students who lived out their shared passion on conventional instruments. Guy Berryman laid down a light foundation on bass; Jonny Buckland shaped the sound on guitar with electrifying motifs. Will Champion demonstrated a feel for the shimmering and bouncy grooves that corresponded to the trend of the beginning of the 21st century: rock music at that time showed its pampered side and declared “the quiet” to be the new “loud”.
The producers dominate
Coldplay appeared as a rock band with a pop flavor. That changed at the latest with the fourth studio album “Viva La Vida” (2008). Maybe Chris Marin and his friends no longer knew where their musical journey was headed. Maybe it was the desire for sonic adventures that motivated the four friends to bring Brian Eno into the studio. The experienced producer managed to dress the band with new sounds.
The new album, however, lived from orchestral power, from synthetic colors and spherical effects that maneuvered the old instruments and instrumentalists into the sidelines. Since then, she has hardly been needed in the studio anymore. And on the concert stage their task is reduced to enlivening the studio recordings with a few live sounds. And Will Champion has been reduced to a slavish timpanist who has to beat quantified beats into the room.
After “Viva La Vida,” the band worked with a number of different producers and increasingly lost focus on their own artistic style. The new albums were filled with pop, dance, soft rock, R’n’B, world music or ambient to appeal to every potential music fan.
In order to continue pursuing this strategy, Max Martin was finally brought on board. The Swede, who has now shaped the repertoire of “Moon Music”, is one of the most versatile and successful songwriters and producers ever; He has served every international star with a hit, from the Backstreet Boys to Taylor Swift. However, he places little value on categories such as originality and artistic unity.
An end with pain
That explains the everyday menu of the new Coldplay album. The title song, a string overture with lovely piano motifs, is followed by a hit (“Feelslikeimfallinginlove”), a pop anthem (“We Pray”), a guitar-pop number (“Jupiter”), some dance-pop (“Good Feelings”), some ambient (“Rainbow”), a pop banger (“IAMM”), disco/house with a highlife choir (“Aeterna”), a tearjerker (“All MY Love”) and a spherical, meditative electro -Track with bird songs (“One World”): robins and blackbirds provide a late climax here.
Chris Martin has been talking about an imminent breakup of Coldplay for years. It was supposed to be over after the seventh album. Now we have reached the tenth. The dozen will now be filled, he says today, but then that should be it. Anyone who is crying about it now is a wrong fan. After “Moon Music” you can’t wish anything better for Chris Martin and his colleagues than the end of their band and their decline.
