Violet Hill

Violet Hill by Coldplay



Is Coldplay the most obvious unobvious band ever? On the face of it, just raising this question seems inane—the number of bands who are marketing creations would seemingly bump Coldplay out of contention right away. But think about it, Coldplay wants to be U2, they act like U2 in commercials where they're trying to look like U2. Coldplay is copying a band who set out on being the most obvious and pretentious without being pretentious band over 20 years ago. The only time that U2 didn't do something obvious was probably in the late 90s when they stuck with the whole "Pop" era stuff. Both 'shifts' in U2's career were actually fairly obvious:
1) Achtung Baby was really not all that big of a musical shift when you listen to the album. The biggest difference between Achtung Baby and previous U2 ablums is that Bono didn't try to write any obnoxious, yet lovable, songs like "Pride" or "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".
2) All That You Can't Leave Behind was really the only album U2 could make after "Pop". Call it a return to U2's roots or just call it an album that hasn't aged well AT ALL even though it was released less than 8 years ago.

Right after (or right when) All That You Can't Leave Behind came out, Coldplay struck it big with Yellow. A one hit wonder they were not since once one heard "Shiver" you knew Chris Martin and friends weren't going away. They had talent. And they backed it up with their second album which while maybe not as good as some fans claim, it's not as bad as some critics claim either. On their third album, Coldplay tries to sort of do what they did on their first two albums, only they don't, and aside from the bridge on "Speed of Sound" the album has more throw up moments than anything else ("My song is love" the first line of "A Message" is the worst line in music history and I will not argue this, even with Bill Simmons).

So what does Coldplay do to follow up? They hire Brian Eno to produce their next album—I'm not even making this up. Hiring Eno was the most unobvious obvious move a band like Coldplay could make. The thinking must have been, "If we hire U2's producer he'll make sure we don't sound like Coldplay!" Instead what Coldplay told the world was: "We're a poor band's U2, only we don't cover U2 songs and we never talk about Jesus." (BTW, I'd pay good money to see Coldplay cover U2 songs for two hours. It's also pay good money to watch Oasis cover Beatles songs. And I think it'd be awesome if Jet actually covered the songs they ripped off on "Get Born").

Anyway, back to Coldplay, their fourth album, Viva la Vida something and it goes on, is completely and totally underwhelming. Why? Because it is so friggin' unobviously obvious that it can't be any good. If it was obviously unobvoius I might be able to take it, but it's the other way around, and therefore I'm left listening to the same four tracks.

And good tracks they are. This song is surprisingly good, maybe it's because I totally relate to the song, always dangerous, but true at the moment. "So if you love me, why'd you let me go?... If you love me, won't you let me know". Sometimes love just doesn't go the way it's supposed to go. As U2 sang, and the Beatles too, pride can be a very very bad thing and unfortuntally gets in the way of love.