Album cover // Coldplay
By: Jordan Sarver-Bontrager
Media Writer
On Oct. 4, Coldplay released their tenth studio album, “Moon Music,” following their controversial 2021 album “Music Of The Spheres.”
For those that know me, you know that Coldplay has been my favorite band for several years at this point, and even though the quality of their albums has taken a nosedive since “Viva La Vida”, I still hold the band in very high regard.
Coldplay is responsible for creating some of my favorite albums of all time, like 2000’s “Parachutes”, their debut album featuring tracks like the desperate “Shiver”, the emotional “Sparks” and the highlight of the album, and the band’s first big song, “Yellow”, which is the song that introduced me to the band.
2002’s “A Rush of Blood to the Head” is also full of hits, including “Clocks” and “The Scientist” (my favorite song of all time). Deep cuts like the devastating “Warning Sign” and the crushing closer, “Amsterdam”, are some of the band’s best songs. “X&Y,” from 2005, also included some memorable tracks, like the uplifting “Fix You.”
Since then, the band changed their sound from alternative rock and Britpop to mainstream pop. “Ghost Stories” from 2014 was probably their best album under the new sound, but the following year’s “A Head Full of Dreams” was a warning sign that the band was on the decline. In 2019, Coldplay released “Everyday Life”, which was a more experimental album than anything else and ranged from high quality to downright unlistenable.
In 2021, the band released “Music of the Spheres”, which is their worst album. This album is so bad that I stopped listening to the band shortly after it was released. I cannot praise an album where the majority of the song titles were emojis. I’m not kidding.
Now we arrive at “Moon Music”, an album that I expected the worst from, an album that I was anticipating as if I were awaiting a terminal cancer diagnosis. Believe me, I wanted this album to be amazing, but as much as I love this band, I find it very difficult to defend them at this point. Perhaps Coldplay is a perfect metaphor for how everyone you love will let you down at some point.
While I listened to “Moon Music”, I braced myself for a disaster, and what I got…wasn’t that, but my feelings on this album are complicated.
We open with the title track with the gorgeous instrumentation that the band is well known for at this point, then the lead single “feelslikeimfallinginlove. It’s a good song with hints of the old Coldplay in its guitars, pianos and the lyricism from Chris Martin that made the early days of Coldplay so great.
Then came track three, “WE PRAY”: the second single from the album, I’m not going to sugarcoat this or defend this, “WE PRAY” is awful and I hate it. It’s a Coldplay rap song; that’s all that needs to be said. Throw it in the fire and never perform this live, Coldplay.
After that, there was “JUPITER”, a song reminiscent of the “Parachutes” era, with hopeful-yet-anxious lyrics over an acoustic guitar. That’s the Coldplay I love. After that, I was hit with “GOOD FEELINGS”, which was a generic club song. It’s as if the album doesn’t know what it wants to be.
The second half of the album begins with “[rainbow emoji]”. This is a serious publication, so I’ll substitute in the description of the title, which is actually…just the rainbow emoji. Anyway, it’s a good song, with a sample at the end that has the lyrics “When it looked like the sun wouldn’t shine anymore, God put a rainbow in the clouds.”
Regardless of faith, I think that a lot of people can agree that is a beautiful line. What I didn’t expect is for Coldplay to suddenly remember what made them so great in their early years. Immediately after the emoji song, there was “iAAM”, which stands for I Am A Mountain. (Just use that as the title, is that so difficult?) “iAAM” is a fantastic track, and it reminds me of the band’s sound from the “A Rush of Blood to the Head” era. It’s easily the best song, with uplifting and beautiful lyrics about resilience and love that Chris Martin just has a knack for writing.
Finally, we arrive at the final two tracks, “ALL MY LOVE” and “ONE WORLD”, the former of which is a beautiful love song about enduring the challenges that come with loving someone. It’s driven by piano, acoustic guitar and strings, reminiscent of the Coldplay we know and love.
“ONE WORLD” is the closer, and it begins with the sound of birds chirping, then it becomes an anthem that repeats the line “Only one world” and “In the end, it’s just love,” a beautiful sentiment that the band has been pushing for their entire career.
Overall, “Moon Music” has some of the best Coldplay songs in years, but it also baffles me as it has some of the worst Coldplay songs I’ve ever heard. It’s a very well produced album, and I liked the mixing even on the songs I didn’t enjoy very much.
I think Coldplay, despite constant negative reviews since their switch to pop music, has been resilient, and I think that’s a major theme of the album, along with love and enjoying life despite the pain of living.
Despite one very bad apple and some generic pop tunes, I think Coldplay made a good album – definitely an improvement from “Music of the Spheres”. This album has me loving the band again, and I am very enthusiastic about the direction they are heading. If their next album is anything like the final five songs on “Moon Music” and they fine tune that sound, they will have made another masterpiece – as long as they start titling the songs properly with NO EMOJIS.
I am feeling a 7/10 on this album.
