Coldplay

July 9, 2000 at PDT

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.

10 Tracks

December 3, 2015 at PST

A Head Full of Dreams

Chris Martin felt that A Head Full of Dreams marked the end of something for Coldplay. In his mind, the band’s lead singer compared it to the seven colors of the color spectrum—on their seventh record, they were completing a journey. It made for a dazzling and joyous album, something that felt like a culmination over everything the four-piece had explored over the previous 15-plus years.

There were no concerns about what was cool and what wasn’t anymore. Coldplay were way beyond that, more interested in celebrating that they were a band who loved pop music as much as they loved rock ’n’ roll, so why not combine it all? To that end, A Head Full of Dreams features appearances from Beyoncé, Noel Gallagher, Brian Eno, Tove Lo, and Merry Clayton with some guests that went beyond the realm of musical peers. There’s the political—Barack Obama pops up on two tracks for spoken-word excerpts—and the personal in a Coldplay Jr. choir made up of all their children, plus Martin’s ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow singing a line referring to their breakup on the tender ballad “Everglow.”

Beginning work on the album directly after the completion of Ghost Stories’ low-key introspection, A Head Full of Dreams was designed to be that record’s opposite, a return to big holler-along choruses and monumental, hug-your-mate hooks. Teaming up with megahit specialists and Grammy-winning production duo Stargate, they dived deeper into the pop world than they ever had before. From the spiraling riff that conducts the pulsing dance-pop of “Adventure of a Lifetime” to the euphoric “whoa-oh-oh”s of the title track, this was Coldplay at their most unashamedly positive and uplifting. On the irresistible R&B grooves of “Hymn for the Weekend,” Martin and Beyoncé joined forces for one of the group’s most rousing and rhapsodic choruses. The idea behind A Head Full of Dreams was that if you focus on something hard enough and want it to happen, you can will it into existence. Here, all of Coldplay’s dreams came true. Their first spectrum ended with the biggest of bangs.

11 Tracks

May 18, 2014 at PDT

Ghost Stories

It was halfway through the tour to support 2011’s Mylo Xyloto that someone pointed Chris Martin in the direction of The Guest House, a poem by the 13th- century mystic Rumi. Its concept—that whatever is happening to you in life, if you sit with it, somehow a blessing will reveal itself—chimed with Martin as he struggled to find a way through tough times. It sparked a whole new way of thinking for him and resulted in Ghost Stories, Coldplay’s most cathartic and intimate record. Written and recorded as Martin navigated his way through a separation from wife Gwyneth Paltrow—or, as they put it, a “conscious uncoupling”—and the aftermath, everything about Ghost Stories felt like a deviation from what had come to be defined as standard practice on a Coldplay album.

Bar a few one-off shows, there was no accompanying tour and so no ecstatic stadium sing-alongs—plus there were no big anthems to sing along with, anyway (well, almost). The thinking went that, as these songs were dealing with such personal issues, it felt natural to make Ghost Stories a more intimate and quiet record. In that sense, it presented an intriguing, inside-out version of the band who had become masters of music as a communal, jubilant experience.

Recorded mostly at the band’s own studios in North London, it showed that Coldplay could still astonish even when stripped of all the bells and whistles. The mournful, slow-motion glide of “Always in My Head” set the tone for the record’s considered vibe but, musically, there was still a compelling restlessness at work: new flavors on the folktronica groove of “Ink,” “Midnight”’s ambient soundscapes, and the minimalist soul of “Magic.” Even on more familiar ground, there was a poignancy at play—the solemn acoustic strums of “Oceans” sound like Chris Martin trying to reach out to his younger, Parachutes-era self to ask him what the hell happened. Because they like to keep people on their toes, right in the middle of all this pensive brooding is “A Sky Full of Stars,” an out-and-out piano-rave banger that they made with late superstar DJ Avicii.

It was a record that emotionally cleared the decks for Martin and Coldplay and they jumped straight into their next album, 2015’s A Head Full of Dreams, without taking a break. Ghost Stories was the pit stop that allowed them to take stock and work out where to go next.

9 Tracks

June 5, 2005 at PDT

X&Y

Coldplay’s third album was made during the toughest time of the band’s career. 2002’s A Rush of Blood to the Head had made them one of the world’s biggest groups, but now things began to unravel. Lead singer Chris Martin, newly married to actress and Hollywood A-Lister Gwyneth Paltrow, grappled with a level of fame that would have been unthinkable just a few years before; the band were uncertain about which musical direction to take next; relationships within the band had become strained; and they were under pressure from their label to get a record finished sooner rather than later. It didn’t help that they were a man down—the band’s non-playing “fifth member” and manager, Phil Harvey, a crucial part of their creative process, had departed after the completion of A Rush of Blood.

It all helped to make X&Y’s writing and recording a testing period for the quartet, but somehow they emerged with a record that both refined what went before and put a resolve in Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer Will Champion to stay together. Working in a sporadic fashion over 18 months, a spell spread across six studios in the US and the UK, the group wrote over 60 songs—but often found themselves coming to a creative dead end. Crucially, they had one killer song and around it a record began to take shape. “Fix You,” written for Paltrow after the death of her father, was one of Coldplay’s most affecting and bombastic sing-alongs yet, growing from an organ-led hymnal into a bells-and-whistles midtempo anthem. It would carry X&Y on its back.

At the same time, realizing that they needed to be working more as a band rather than individually on their parts in the studio, new sonic routes started to emerge. Opener “Square One,” with its wiry guitars and rhythmic urgency, was an explosive banger that sounded like U2 reimagining Interpol; “What If” paired sumptuous strings with a sinuous bass groove and layered guitars; and “Low” draped a propulsive indie rock tune in glacial synths and atmospheric soundscapes—the addition of electronic textures across the record evidence of a band keen to try new things.

Speaking about X&Y in 2015, Martin quipped, “I’d like to take 10 minutes off it and tidy up the haircuts.” It was a period that put a full stop on the first phase of Coldplay. They would be a different band on their next album, even more ambitious and daring. X&Y went on to sell over 13 million copies, another massively successful hit for the biggest British group of the 21st century. But what it taught them was even more valuable. From here, everything changed.

13 Tracks

January 24, 2016 at PST

Hymn for the Weekend (Seeb Remix) - Single

1 Trackfalse

October 18, 2011 at PDT

Mylo Xyloto

Coldplay had the wind in its sails as the band arrived at its fifth record. 2008’s Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends had made for an exhilarating course correction after the uncertainty of 2005’s X&Y and here they seemed emboldened by the momentum their fourth record had generated. Mylo Xyloto is the sound of Coldplay fully embracing their status as one of the world’s biggest bands, a record that introduced a sense of spectacular into the mix where everything—the Day-Glo artwork and style, the luminous sonics, the silly title—feels pushed to the utmost degree. It’s Coldplay at their most bombastic.

It could have headed in the opposite direction, though. The original plan was to make a stripped-down album that would hark back to the stark introspection and acoustic guitars of the early work. But big tunes that deserved big production kept arriving and Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman, and Will Champion found themselves writing two records that differed in sound and vibe. It was working on a raw, accordion-led version of “Charlie Brown” that put an end to that notion when Berryman suggested it was madness not to do it as a panoramic rock-pop sing-along. The acoustic record was shelved and, in its wake, came Mylo Xyloto. The finished version of “Charlie Brown” featured no accordion. Instead, it sounded like Achtung Baby-era U2 being launched into space.

A concept album set on the fictional planet of Silencia and telling the tale of a war against sound and color—can you tell that Coldplay was embracing the spirit of theatricality here?—Mylo Xyloto saw the quartet brighten their sonic palette with the kaleidoscopic sound of modern pop, where their trademark shimmering guitar lines and muscular rhythms are elevated by strobing synths, R&B beats, and layered soundscapes. The dynamic production would count for nothing without rapturous hooks to hang everything on, though, and Coldplay had them in spades. The swirling melodrama of “Paradise” was their best pop moment, yet that was given a run for its money by the Rihanna-featuring electro-pop euphoria of “Princess Of China,” while the cosmic rave thrust of “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall” showed they could still do yearning on such a grand canvas.

The smattering of lower-key songs throughout the record— the round-the-campfire strums of “Us Against the World,” “U.F.O.”’s finger-picked folk, the glacial contemplation of closer “Up With the Birds”—were just as essential, gear changes that gave the album its bearings. Perhaps aware that they had taken this sound as far as it could go, they changed tack on their next record, but Mylo Xyloto had already had the desired effect. This was the album that blew Coldplay’s sonic horizons wide open.

14 Tracks

October 14, 2021 at PDT

Music of the Spheres

You don’t become one of the biggest bands in the world without sticking to a system. In Coldplay’s case, that means starting every album with an agreed-upon title that dictates the project’s direction, from songwriting to production style to visuals. “It allows us a little bit of discipline in the studio knowing what we're trying to build,” bassist Guy Berryman tells Apple Music. “If you're building a building without any kind of architect's drawings, you would just start piling bricks on top of each other.” This preparation particularly came in handy in the case of a paralyzing global pandemic. Since 2019's Everyday Life was always intended to be stripped-down and introspective, without the customary world tour, the band already had a trove of songs earmarked for a proper larger-than-life affair and a vision for their use. They knew it would be called Music of the Spheres and they knew it would be helmed by Swedish über-producer Max Martin (no relation to frontman Chris), a partnership they kicked the tires on with the Everyday Life track “Orphans.” “He's just so talented and everything just meshed together so well with everybody's personalities in the studio,” Berryman says. “We had thought ahead to playing in big stadiums.”

Lead single “Higher Power” could not have made those blockbuster intentions clearer or been a better showcase for (Max) Martin’s trademark pop sheen. The entire project is so imbued with youthful spirit that five tracks have emojis as titles. “Let Somebody Go” features Selena Gomez, while “My Universe” boasts none other than K-pop phenomenon BTS, who could always use some brains to pick as they learn how to navigate megastardom. “I think they're bigger than us,” Berryman says. “We should have been asking them.” Read on for behind-the-scenes tales of making Music of the Spheres.

“🪐”
“That’s an intro piece called ‘Music of the Spheres.’ We always make albums as a whole, and we started putting interludes and musical sections between songs, almost like palate cleansers.”

“Higher Power”
“I think people needed to have something uplifting. We wanted to put out this optimism and positivity into everything on this album. The famous story which is going around about this song is how Chris kind of was tapping out the drum pattern on a bathroom sink, and he recorded it on his phone and then went and wrote the song on top of it.”

“Humankind”
“You can sketch ideas out in the studio sometimes, and that was one we were really kind of struggling with before Max took the reins. It didn't sound very fresh; it had a good energy, but was maybe just a little bit too rock for us, and he really gave it more of a modern shine. It could be from just editing the basic song and the song structure or it could be adjusting slightly the rhythm pattern to make it all stick together better.”

“✨”
“It's an interlude.”

“Let Somebody Go” (feat. Selena Gomez)
“It's just a really lovely ballad. And quite early on we realized it needed a female counterpart to the vocal. And we were very grateful that when we asked Selena to sing on it, she loved the song and was happy to do so. Collaborations in general are something that we've done more of recently. We never really used to do it before. When we were younger, we kind of locked ourselves in a room and felt we had to prove everything ourselves. But I think as time has gone on, it's become more interesting for us to work with other people from different parts of the world, different genres. It just adds color and character to the music.”

“❤️” (feat. We Are KING and Jacob Collier)
“We love the way that sound shaped up with all the stacked layers of vocals; it's almost like a modern-sounding gospel song in some ways. Sometimes as a musician, it's my job to step in and say, 'Actually, the best course of action for me is to not play anything at all, because what we created here has a much more unique sound.' You have to take your ego out of the picture and understand that the best job you can do is leave something alone. Because then it allows the other songs around it to sound bigger and fuller.”

“People of the Pride”
“We started the song probably over 10 years ago and couldn’t really finish it. Again, this was one which Max really helped shape sonically. The way we had it before, it sounded a little bit old-fashioned, almost like glam rock. What Max managed to do was take the energy and layer in a way which preserved that feel but also made it sound very modern at the same time.”

“Biutyful”
“That's quite an interesting song from a production point of view, because it's really kind of pushing the boundary for us in terms of vocal identity. The manipulated voice is almost like an alien character singing this song. Is it Chris' voice? That is highly, highly confidential. Nobody will ever know. It's going to be a big old secret.”

“🌎”
“It’s an interlude.”

“My Universe” (feat. BTS)
“BTS were asked in an interview who they'd like to collaborate with, potentially, and a couple of the guys said they'd love to collaborate with us. A lot of the themes on this album are about bringing people together and taking away divisions and walls and boundaries and all of these human constructs that keep people apart. So we felt like this would be great because it's an unusual collaboration between people who are known to come from a different genre and completely different part of the world.”

“♾️”
“That is not an interlude, it’s a longer piece—a collaboration with an old friend of ours who has been on our albums before, Jon Hopkins. He's an unbelievably talented musician, piano player, and arranger. He works in an electronic genre on his own music, so he has the ability to create these very beautiful landscapes in a way that none of us can really do.”

“Coloratura”
“Each album can quite easily be defined by the singles you release on the radio, and it's always important to us when we make albums to include many different moods and textures and styles. So it was important to us, as a counterbalance to some of the poppier songs, to have something which was unashamedly long and complicated. It started off with more of a conventional song structure, then Chris came in one day and showed us the arrangement including all these interludes and sections between the parts we were already familiar with; it was a big challenge to piece it all together. Max's involvement on that song was extremely minimal; if he got hands on it, I think it would be chopped up into something a lot shorter, the chorus 10 seconds in.”

12 Tracks

November 21, 2019 at PST

Everyday Life

If the kaleidoscopic joy of 2015’s A Head Full of Dreams feels like a distant memory now, that’s natural—it was a different time. In the four years since we last heard from Coldplay, the world has grown more chaotic. “Not that there hasn’t always been craziness,” frontman Chris Martin tells Apple Music, “but it’s so in-your-face all the time. It can only make you feel like—it doesn’t matter the consequence, you have to sing what’s coming through.” In response comes Everyday Life, a double album that finds arguably this century’s biggest and most agreeable rock band attempting to inspire unity, at considerable cost and risk. “It’s very true to us,” Martin says. “That’s all I know.”

They’ve organized the album conceptually. The first half, Sunrise, opens with strings both somber and hopeful. “It’s the challenges we see happening in our lives and in lots of other people’s lives,” Martin explains. The second, Sunset, is “a bit more, ‘How might you meet those challenges? How can one go on?’” That side kicks off with “Guns,” an acoustic number in which Martin references Dylan and skewers American gun violence, deadpanning, “Melt down all the trumpets, all the trombones and the drums/Who needs education or a thousand splendid suns?” It’s the most urgent and overtly political they’ve sounded since 2002’s “Politik,” which was recorded in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Unlike their most recent output, Everyday Life is similarly raw, interspersed with snippets of ambient sound that lend the album familiar texture: street noise, birdsong, a tense exchange between motorist and police officer. When Martin takes to his piano and sings alongside a gospel chorus in “BrokEn,” you feel like you’re sitting in church a few feet away from them.

While much of the record errs on the side of understatement, there are anthems and grand gestures as well. On “Arabesque,” the entire band joins forces with Femi Kuti’s Positive Force for a feverish Afrobeat groove that, in addition to a verse in French, features the central refrain: “We share the same blood.” That message rings throughout Everyday Life, from the open-armed, choir-led embrace of “Orphans”—where Guy Berryman’s bassline sets a new gold standard for buoyancy—to the spoken-word immediacy of “بنی آدم” to the twilight skywriting of closing duo “Champion of the World” and the title track. “Everyone hurts, everyone cries, everyone tells each other all kinds of lies,” Martin sings on the latter. “Everyone falls, everybody dreams and doubts/Got to keep dancing when the lights go out.”

16 Tracks

May 5, 2021 at PDT

Higher Power - Single

1 Trackfalse

October 3, 2024 at PDT

Moon Music

Coldplay has been fusing together stadium rock with intricate descriptions of emotion for more than a quarter century, and their 10th album opens with a grand overture that sets the listener up for an uplifting experience. But Moon Music’s title track upends expectations quickly, dissolving into a simple piano melody that refracts and folds in on itself until lead vocalist Chris Martin breaks the spell.

“Once upon a time I tried to get myself together/Be more like the sky and welcome every kind of weather,” Martin muses in a singsong cadence, picking apart his insecurities and foibles until he finally asks, “Is anyone out there? I just need a friend,” as the instruments backing him melt into a puddle. The show of vulnerability is a startling opening, but being so open felt right for the multi-hyphenate Martin. “With ‘MOON MUSiC,’” Martin tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, “I felt like, ‘Well, what if I just really told how I feel every day?’”

At this point in their career, closer to the end of their run than not (more on that in a moment), Coldplay has broken up the cycle by touring continuously while making and releasing new music rather than subjecting themselves to predictable album-tour cycles. The band considers Moon Music to be of a piece with 2021’s Music of the Spheres rather than another era. “I quite like this way of working where you don’t have to attach albums to tours and they don’t have to be these things that start and stop,” says bassist Guy Berryman. “It’s quite nice having the fluidity of what we are doing.”

Moon Music, like the satellite it’s named after, dips in and out of different phases while still holding fast to Coldplay’s hooky, thoughtful core—appropriate for an album that’s largely about remaining true to oneself. “JUPiTER” is a tale of self-acceptance that opens with Martin in folkie mode, with more voices and instruments coming in as the titular character begins to feel comfortable in her own skin: “I love who I love,” Martin and a choir sing in call-and-response mode on the chorus, and the music grows more ecstatic as Jupiter’s story grows more jubilant. The gorgeously assembled “🌈,” meanwhile, incorporates the late Maya Angelou singing the spiritual “God Put a Rainbow in the Clouds.” “You have to accept all your colors and all the colors of other people—literally and metaphorically,” says Martin. “Once you accept all those colors, then you can be yourself, and then you can let everyone else be themselves.”

Coldplay’s and Martin’s flirtations with the dance floor over the years have resulted in some of their biggest hits, and Moon Music finds salvation in different eras of clubbing. “AETERNA” brings the band back to the rave, its stretched-out guitars and galloping rhythms framing Martin’s exhortations to “feel it flow.” The duet with Nigerian upstart Ayra Starr “GOOD FEELiNGS” drops by the disco, while “feelslikeimfallinginlove” hearkens back to Coldplay’s grandest pop triumphs, its fist-pumping chorus getting energy from the romantic sentiments Martin’s singing about.

Much has been made of Martin’s insisting that Coldplay is going to call it quits after album 12. (“Having that limit means that the quality control is so high right now that for a song to make it is almost impossible, which is great,” he explains.) But Martin wants Coldplay’s listeners to experience Moon Music as a representation of where he and his bandmates are in this dizzying moment. “It’s our manifesto, or my way of looking at things right now,” says Martin. “In terms of how to continue, how to not give up, how to accept reality, not run away from it, not hate anybody—even in the midst of always being filled with so many difficult emotions. And it’s with Max Martin: He made sure that it’s really good.”

11 Tracks

June 11, 2008 at PDT

Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends

Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends is the sound of Coldplay starting over. A grueling tour to support their third album X&Y (2005), the recording of which was also an arduous process for the quartet, had ended with the British rock giants wondering whether they should call it a day. Instead, Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman, and Will Champion completely reinvented themselves.

This was a total creative overhaul. Before they even began thinking about music, first they had to recalibrate their setup. They bought and renovated a building in North London and turned it into Coldplay HQ. Christened The Bakery in a nod to its former use, here Coldplay could write, record, rehearse, discuss artwork ideas, and hang out. With a studio on one level and their management offices on another, the band now had their own base from which to operate. Away from prying eyes, a reimagining could take place.

It helped that their “fifth member” Phil Harvey, a long-term sounding board who had sat out the making of X&Y, was back on board as the band’s creative director. Even more crucial to Viva la Vida…’s artistic process was the inclusion of Brian Eno on coproduction duties. The former Roxy Music man and Bowie collaborator brought an experimental approach to album sessions and helped Coldplay redefine what a stadium-rock record could be just as he had done with U2 two decades earlier. Eno encouraged a spirit of collaboration between band members and took them out of their comfort zones.

It made for an extraordinary album, one where Coldplay ditched the idea that bigger and more bombastic was the only way to go for a group of their stature. There are exhilarating sing-alongs on Viva la Vida…—can you get more exhilarating than the outro to the title track?—and there are indelible, irresistible melodies, but there is a delicacy too, a confidence to let these songs breathe. To that end, Viva la Vida… often sounds like a Coldplay we hadn’t heard before. On the cosmic crash of instrumental opener “Life in Technicolour,” the Afropop and highlife-indebted sway of “Strawberry Swing” (a song later covered by Frank Ocean), or the airy art rock of “Lovers in Japan,” here was a band rejuvenated.

Released in June 2008, Viva la Vida… went on to sell over 11 million copies, its freedom of expression giving Coldplay the belief to try anything going forward. That Coldplay went on to be a band who could collaborate with both Noel Gallagher and Beyoncé, both Femi Kuti and BTS, can be traced back here. Making Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends taught Coldplay that anything was possible.

10 Tracks

July 13, 2017 at PDT

Kaleidoscope - EP

This is the sound of a band full of easy confidence. We’re treated to a blast of vintage Coldplay on “All I Can Think About Is You”—a simmering slow burner of Parachutes-era intensity—while the sunset pop of “Miracles (Someone Special)” sees Big Sean add his name to the band's roster of unlikely-but-satisfying collaborators.

5 Tracks

March 1, 2017 at PST

Hypnotised - Single

1 Trackfalse

June 11, 2008 at PDT

Viva la Vida (Prospekt's March Edition)

19 Tracks

December 6, 2018 at PST

Live In Buenos Aires

“We exist for, and because of, you,” Chris Martin tells close to 50,000 people in the Estadio Ciudad de la Plata, Buenos Aires. Ever since they first broke big in 2000 with “Yellow,” a song that dedicates an entire night sky to an object of desire, Coldplay have betrayed a willingness to please. As deep into their career as 2016, Chris Martin was describing playing live as a “service,” viewing Coldplay as mere backing musicians in a communal, singalong experience for their fans. It’s a philosophy that rings through this companion piece to the A Head Full of Dreams documentary, recorded at their November 2017 gig in the Argentine capital. They do much to charm a noisily responsive crowd, Martin addressing them in Spanish throughout and the band playing “Amor Argentina”—a bespoke new tango in which the singer proclaims, “Porque en este lugar/Hallé un gozo profundo” (“Because in this place/I found a deep joy”)—alongside a cover of “De Música Ligera” by local alt-rock legends Soda Stereo. Around those two tracks sits a remarkable collection of tried-and-tested crowd-pleasers—each played with vitality and enthusiasm, as if they’d only just been minted in the studio. The incisive, universal longing of “The Scientist” and we’re-in-this-together optimism of “Up&Up” are potent reminders that Coldplay’s personal touch extends far beyond learning the local lingo.

24 Tracks

October 3, 2024 at PDT

Moon Music (Full Moon Edition)

Coldplay has been fusing together stadium rock with intricate descriptions of emotion for more than a quarter century, and their 10th album opens with a grand overture that sets the listener up for an uplifting experience. But Moon Music’s title track upends expectations quickly, dissolving into a simple piano melody that refracts and folds in on itself until lead vocalist Chris Martin breaks the spell.

“Once upon a time I tried to get myself together/Be more like the sky and welcome every kind of weather,” Martin muses in a singsong cadence, picking apart his insecurities and foibles until he finally asks, “Is anyone out there? I just need a friend,” as the instruments backing him melt into a puddle. The show of vulnerability is a startling opening, but being so open felt right for the multi-hyphenate Martin. “With ‘MOON MUSiC,’” Martin tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, “I felt like, ‘Well, what if I just really told how I feel every day?’”

At this point in their career, closer to the end of their run than not (more on that in a moment), Coldplay has broken up the cycle by touring continuously while making and releasing new music rather than subjecting themselves to predictable album-tour cycles. The band considers Moon Music to be of a piece with 2021’s Music of the Spheres rather than another era. “I quite like this way of working where you don’t have to attach albums to tours and they don’t have to be these things that start and stop,” says bassist Guy Berryman. “It’s quite nice having the fluidity of what we are doing.”

Moon Music, like the satellite it’s named after, dips in and out of different phases while still holding fast to Coldplay’s hooky, thoughtful core—appropriate for an album that’s largely about remaining true to oneself. “JUPiTER” is a tale of self-acceptance that opens with Martin in folkie mode, with more voices and instruments coming in as the titular character begins to feel comfortable in her own skin: “I love who I love,” Martin and a choir sing in call-and-response mode on the chorus, and the music grows more ecstatic as Jupiter’s story grows more jubilant. The gorgeously assembled “🌈,” meanwhile, incorporates the late Maya Angelou singing the spiritual “God Put a Rainbow in the Clouds.” “You have to accept all your colors and all the colors of other people—literally and metaphorically,” says Martin. “Once you accept all those colors, then you can be yourself, and then you can let everyone else be themselves.”

Coldplay’s and Martin’s flirtations with the dance floor over the years have resulted in some of their biggest hits, and Moon Music finds salvation in different eras of clubbing. “AETERNA” brings the band back to the rave, its stretched-out guitars and galloping rhythms framing Martin’s exhortations to “feel it flow.” The duet with Nigerian upstart Ayra Starr “GOOD FEELiNGS” drops by the disco, while “feelslikeimfallinginlove” hearkens back to Coldplay’s grandest pop triumphs, its fist-pumping chorus getting energy from the romantic sentiments Martin’s singing about.

Much has been made of Martin’s insisting that Coldplay is going to call it quits after album 12. (“Having that limit means that the quality control is so high right now that for a song to make it is almost impossible, which is great,” he explains.) But Martin wants Coldplay’s listeners to experience Moon Music as a representation of where he and his bandmates are in this dizzying moment. “It’s our manifesto, or my way of looking at things right now,” says Martin. “In terms of how to continue, how to not give up, how to accept reality, not run away from it, not hate anybody—even in the midst of always being filled with so many difficult emotions. And it’s with Max Martin: He made sure that it’s really good.”

21 Tracks

November 30, 2010 at PST

Christmas Lights - Single

1 Trackfalse

December 3, 2015 at PST

Everglow - Single

2 Tracks

November 18, 2012 at PST

Live 2012

Coldplay spent most of 2011-2012 criss-crossing the globe in support of Mylo Xyloto, a tour witnessed by three million people in over 80 venues. Their astonishing theatricality is presented in this live document, featuring all the goosebump-inducing moments, the solemn weight of “Fix You”, and favourites like “Yellow” and “In My Place” given fresh coats of paint.

15 Tracks

November 5, 2015 at PST

Adventure of a Lifetime (Radio Edit) - Single

1 Trackfalse

April 14, 2022 at PDT

Let Somebody Go (Ofenbach Remix) - Single

1 Trackfalse

April 27, 2017 at PDT

Something Just Like This (Remixes)

6 Tracks

February 6, 2022 at PST

Let Somebody Go - Single

1 Trackfalse

June 20, 2024 at PDT

feelslikeimfallinginlove (Single Version)

1 Trackfalse