Posted on 06/06/2005 7:07:42 AM PDT by Petronski
There's nothing wrong with self-pity. As a spur to songwriting, it's right up there with lust, anger and greed, and probably better than the remaining deadly sins. There's nothing wrong, either, with striving for musical grandeur, using every bit of skill and studio illusion to create a sound large enough to get lost in. Male sensitivity, a quality that's under siege in a pop culture full of unrepentant bullying and machismo, shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, no matter how risible it can be in practice. And building a sound on the lessons of past bands is virtually unavoidable.
But put them all together and they add up to Coldplay, the most insufferable band of the decade.
This week Coldplay releases its painstakingly recorded third album, X&Y (Capitol), a virtually surefire blockbuster that has corporate fortunes riding on it. (The stock price plunged for EMI Group, Capitol's parent company, when Coldplay announced that the album's release date would be moved from February to June, as it continued to rework the songs.)
X&Y is the work of a band that's acutely conscious of the worldwide popularity it cemented with its 2002 album, A Rush of Blood to the Head, which has sold 3 million copies in the United States alone. Along with its 2000 debut album, Parachutes, Coldplay claims sales of 20 million albums worldwide. X&Y makes no secret of grand ambition.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
I don't even know the band, but I do recall their desperate need to shut up and sing.
At the Brit Awards Coldplay's Chris Martin angrily declared: "Awards are essentially nonsense. We're all going to die when George Bush has his way. It's good to go out with a bang."
Coldplay's new album gets blistering review from NYT guy.
I ping you because each of you recently posted observations on a Coldplay thread.
I like their music, and I own all their albums, but like so many other musicians and actors, they need to realize that we don't care about their political opinions. Sure, go ahead and use your attention as celebrities to draw attention and money to charitable causes, that is noble. But no one cares about your political views.
Martin is a British musician married to an actress. Big shock that he would fall to the left politically. Doesn't mean that I think his songs aren't any good, because they are.
Martin makes Cobain look like a winner.
Well, I want to try to make this clear again: I don't know their music, but I do enjoy the schadenfreude.
agreed.
Isn't their 15 minutes of fame about up?
"And the lyrics can make me wish I didn't understand English".
That is truly AWESOME!!!
I think I'll run right out and pirate (oops, I mean "burn")a copy, just so I can hear what all of the fuss is about.
Coldplay is a great example of how dead and completely irrelevent rock n' roll has become. It's bad enough that new rock "songs" are little more than four over-distorted guitar chords played over and over. Add to the mix a sensitive lead singer. Ugh!
Not sure about their politics, but they are posers of the first degree.
ping for later reference
Kid's name is Apple.
What a nincowpoop. What a maroon.
Victor Hanson wrote recently that emerging (and in some cases lesser) arts and artists have no real learning, that no intellectual skills further the natural gifts these monkies might posess.
Martin is an idiot. The commercial arts are of little value. They may 'joke, or mock, or while away the time,' but they 'have no place except in the shadow of great art.'
Two great reads on artistic value are "Style" by Walter Raleigh (the Oxford don, not Sir Walter) and John Gardner's "On Moral Fiction."
There was a Coldplay song that was in ultra heavy rotation about a year or so ago, sort of a slow-tempo, dreamy thing with lots of repetitive piano riffs and some raspy-voiced guy singing a falsetto "AhhhhhhhhhAhhhhhhh!" I think it was called Clocks?
I remember not hating it, but also not really enjoying it either. Just sort of bloodless and void of any real 'teeth'. They seem like a really safe band of 'corporate rock rebels.' But really, it seems like rock has become really irrelevant these days, considering it's what--60 years old? Teenage rebellion and protracted adolescence is just sort of snoozy these days...
Yet another Morrisey wannabe. I'll be so glad when that influence dies.
Yeah, that's Clocks. I (and the reviewer) liked that one, but I didn't like it enough to buy their cd's. Sounds like I'm not really missing out.
You know if you only listen to music that won’t offend your conservative sensibilities, your choices will consist of the Ray Conniff singers and Toby Keith.
You know whats sad, is that I consider much of hip-hop/rap to be more inventive and interesting than what passes for "rock" music these days..
Same old riffs, same old craggly and/or whining voice. I'll take Outkast (hip-hop band) any day over that crap. And I hate most rap!
Coldping!
I don't limit my music to that which won't offend my conservative sensibilities. I limit my music to that which will not offend my musical sensibilities.
If I can rely on music reviewers to find out a particular artist is a hack, I've save that much more time for Beethoven or Barry White or Johnny Cash or Dave Brubeck.
You and me both!!! Martin's politics, although I disagree with him completely, aren't what makes Coldplay unlistenable to me...it's his whiny voice. Yet another thing he and Morrisey have in common. Both have the type of voice that gives me a headache.
My reading of that review suggests the critic pines for the glory days of comparatively talented groups like Milli Vanilli...
BUT. Considering the alternative which is listening to Pop Radio in the year 2005, I'll take Coldplay. Popular Radio today is littered with vapid music, top to bottom.
No one plays real instruments anymore, everyone yodels... you get the picture.
I was in another room when I heard some sounds emanating from the television that made me think that Yoko Ono was doing a cover of the old Tom Waits tune, "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)." Turns out it was some band called Coldplay performing their new hit single on SNL. Definitely needed more cowbell.
The three studio singers who actually sang in Milli Vanilli were talented, only the frontmen were a fraud.
Coldplay is genuine, but apparently, also quite sucky.
LOL
I've got a fever...and the only prescription...is more cowbell!
I shall never hear it.
I used to really like Coldplay, until I couldn't turn on the radio without hearing one of their songs every five minutes. They were overplayed to the point of death. Added to the top of that, I now have to listen to my roommate sing along tunelessly to every song on the d*mn album and she has yet to get any of the lyrics right. You'd think that would stop her, but alas - it hasn't.
Chris Martin is Richard Marx with a little street cred.
I hope that wasn't a backhanded slam at Mr. Waits in there . . . he is a genius, plain and simple, and it's a damn shame only 3% of America knows who he is. (It's even worse that at least half of that 3% only knows he was Renfield in the Gary Oldman version of "Dracula.")
Coldplay's countless fans seem to take comfort when Martin sings lines like, "Is there anybody out there who/Is lost and hurt and lonely too," while a strummed acoustic guitar telegraphs his aching sincerity. Me, I hear a passive-aggressive blowhard, immoderately proud as he flaunts humility. "I feel low," he announces in the chorus of "Low," belied by the peak of a crescendo that couldn't be more triumphant about it.
As reviews go, that one qualifies as an ass-kicking.
About 5 minutes to go........
I also wish they would Shut Up And Sing.
On the other hand, if I restricted my musical tastes to only pro-Bush groups, I'd never hear half of the good new music I enjoy so much.
ROTFLMAO
This rag is losing subscribers and advertisers faster than gitmo muslims crying torture!
Heh heh heh . . . snicker . . . hah hah hah hah!
ROFL!
Coldplay is just pissed that some guy immitating a 2-stroke moped engine is topping them on the charts.
Kinda like a fresh Richard Greico for the 21st century, salted with the insatiable angst of Michael Stipe?
Ding ding ding ba da ding ding ding ding
Ri-i-ing!
I only liked one song of theirs, and I can't even remember what it was called, which shows it didn't leave that big of an impression.
At least Yellowcard, Bowling for Soup etc. are good.
you will find plenty to download in the spyware-free Ares etc.
They aren't bad, but I really only liked one song of theirs enough to download.
I disagree that Coldplay need to shut up and sing. I think they shut up altogether.
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