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!
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