Coldplay

Essential Albums

  • A Rush of Blood to the Head
    A Rush of Blood to the Head
    A Rush of Blood to the Head

    The members of Coldplay began work on their second album determined to show that they were no one-album wonders. The group’s 2000 debut Parachutes, and its calling card anthem “Yellow,” had made the British quartet one of the breakthrough bands of the new millennium, but as far as Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman, and Will Champion were concerned, that was all done and dusted. The real work started now. They already had an early contender in their back pocket—the thumping wide-screen epic “In My Place” had been written and road tested while they toured Parachutes. It provided a sonic template for the record that would become 2002’s A Rush of Blood to the Head, which found the band moving away from the acoustic intimacy of Parachutes and into something more grand and majestic. For Martin, it was an album that needed to live up to those that had previously raised the bar for what rock music could be, chiefly Radiohead’s The Bends and U2’s The Unforgettable Fire. Ironically, Coldplay’s panoramic masterpiece was made in one of the tiniest rooms in Liverpool’s Parr Street Studios, where much of the band’s debut had been recorded. There, they worked day and night, with Martin writing like a man possessed, resulting in more than 30 songs that would need to be whittled down into an album. While Parachutes was introspective and thoughtful, here Martin looked up and out, trying to make sense of an uncertain world and writing a collection of uplifting classics in the process. The opener, “Politik,” features a stomping two-chord pattern that eventually opens its wings into a soaring, jubilant outro; written the day after 9/11, the song set the tone for both Coldplay’s daring new sound and the album’s recurring themes of love and mortality. These are songs injected with a sense of adventure, from the eastern-tinged riffs of “Daylight”—which nods to the monumental sounds of The Big Music-era groups such as Echo & The Bunnymen and Simple Minds—to the horizon-stretching chorus of “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face” to the restraint that underpins the minor-chord poignance of the title track. Even when the band members had enough songs to ensure that Coldplay’s legacy would be more than just “Yellow,” they kept going. Late on, Martin brought in a fully formed ballad for the ages: “The Scientist”, which would become A Rush of Blood to the Head’s centerpiece song. But they still weren’t done. Asking their label to push the release date back so they could work on one more track, they added “Clocks,” with its yearning vocals, driving rhythm, and hypnotic piano repetitions. Coldplay’s second record was complete. It was the album that sent Coldplay stratospheric, turning these polite young men with a successful debut in the bank into one of the biggest bands in the world. Released in August 2002, two months after Coldplay headlined Glastonbury for the first time, the album went on to sell more than 17 million copies and earned a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album in 2003. A record about finding hope in dark times had connected on the biggest scale imaginable. Coldplay would never look back.

  • Parachutes
    Parachutes
    Parachutes

    The members of Coldplay were full of doubt as they began work on their debut album. Four friends who’d met at university in London in the mid-1990s, and who’d played their first gig in 1998, Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman, and Will Champion hadn’t been rushed into making an album by their record label. Instead, they were given a year to get their road legs with a series of small shows around the UK, and to hone their studio chops with an EP, 1999’s The Blue Room. They still weren’t totally prepared to take on a full-length album, though, and it took the steadying hand of producer Ken Nelson to guide them through. One fraught evening at Rockfield Studios in Wales, with the quartet mid-argument, Nelson could see that his young charges needed a break, and advised them all to go out and get some air. “Look at the stars, lads,” he told them. They did, and with those words ringing in the mind of Martin, the band’s songwriting dynamo, a new song began to form. As he played its soothing, uplifting melody to his bandmates, it was obvious something special was stirring. By the time they went to bed that evening, Coldplay had finished and recorded “Yellow,” the song that would propel the group to stardom. “Yellow” is crucial to Parachutes, and not just because it would go on to become Coldplay’s first big hit. It’s the song that anchors this debut—the track that makes sense of everything else. There’s a reason “Yellow” is nestled slap-bang in the middle of the album, as if it’s a counterweight; after all, it’s the big anthem that allows the record its quieter moments, such as the melancholy strums of “Sparks” and the hushed folk of “We Never Change.” Elsewhere on Parachutes, there are the soulful piano patterns of “Trouble” and the gospel-y euphoria of “Everything’s Not Lost”—both of which showed the band’s gift for stirring sing-alongs. And throughout Parachutes, you can hear a young band making music inspired by their teenage fandom: Buckland channels the atmospheric licks of The Stone Roses’ John Squire and The Verve’s Nick McCabe on “High Speed,” and there are heavy nods to Jeff Buckley on the fevered acoustic-rock of “Shiver.” The members of Coldplay might have worried that they didn’t know what they were doing in the studio, but the 10 tracks on Parachutes arrived fully formed. These were songs that felt both introspective and universal—a vibe perfectly summed up in the breezy manner which the band delivers the heartening hook at the center of opener “Don’t Panic,” as if Martin and company didn’t want to wake the people in the next room. Released in July of 2000, and heralded by the success of “Yellow,” Parachutes reached No. 1 in the UK and went on to sell more than 13 million copies worldwide (it also won a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album, and British Album Of The Year at the BRIT Awards). An introduction to a band who would become one of the 21st century’s biggest, Parachutes remains a remarkable record. But it’s also a snapshot of these four musicians as they’d never be again—unproven, uncertain, and unaware of just how massive they were about to become.

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About Coldplay

Coldplay isn’t only one of the most popular English bands but also a torchbearer for an art-rock sound whose roots reach back through Radiohead, U2, Pink Floyd, and The Beatles. Yes, the music is anthemic enough to fill arenas—“Clocks,” “Speed of Sound,” “Paradise,” “A Sky Full of Stars”—but detailed and atmospheric, too, stretching the conventions of modern rock without ever losing the emotional thread. Formed in London in the late ’90s, the band debuted with 2000’s Parachutes. Seasons have changed—the arty experiments of 2008’s Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, the electro rush of 2011’s Mylo Xyloto, the eclecticism of 2019’s Everyday Life—but the core of its sound has been consistent: Propulsive, uplifting, grand but vulnerable. In step with the earnest spirit of its music, the band has also poured considerable resources into philanthropy: performing at Live 8, sponsoring Ocean Cleanup efforts, and notably investing in renewable energy to power 2021's Music of the Spheres World Tour. Whether in crowded bars, lonely bedrooms, closing out the London 2012 Summer Olympics, or headlining the Super Bowl 50 four years later, the effect is more or less the same: At the end of the day, Coldplay comes for the heart.

ORIGIN
London, England
FORMED
1998
GENRE
Alternative

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