Just How Cool Is Coldplay?
First off, let me say that I had heard there was a new coldplay album coming out and that the single was on radio or iTunes or something. Then I saw the new iTunes commercial on TV featuring Coldplay and their new single, “Viva la Vida.” Wow! What a brilliant commercial and an even cooler song! Take a look at it below. It continues the typical iPod commercial animation using the same motif of palette and style. I think it’s just perfect. Maybe I’ll even go and buy one of those 3G iPhones next month!
I remember the first time I encounted Coldplay. It was around August 2001 and I was in Australia. Each year, they have a holiday called Daphodil day where money is raised for cancer. It’s a great cause. That year, the unofficial theme for Daffodil day was Coldplay’s “Yellow” off their debut album Parachutes. I was really impressed. I remember about a month later playing piano duo with a friend late one night in Nashville. We were chatting about everything there was to chat about in this world, in the wake of Sep. 11. Somehow Coldplay came up. I got introduced to “Trouble” at that point. I bought their second and third albums. Everyone kept being in awe over how the second album was “perfect.” I never got into it until about 7 months ago. I loved X&Y.
What strikes me most about “Viva la Vida” is that it seems like a reinvention of Coldplay. Yes, I am now going to compare Coldplay to the Beatles. It was during the Beatles second album Revolver that they began the course of reinventing themselves on each album. In fact, the opening of “Eleanor Rigby” represents one of those cool moments in music historiography where the Beatles incorporate a string quartet, in which none of them are playing. It is the first song where they are not playing the music in the song. It is change of texture and timbre that distinguish “Eleanor Rigby” as this seminal, critical junction for the Beatles. “Viva la Vida” does just that for Coldplay. It is Coldplay’s “Eleanor Rigby.” Well done!
May 27th, 2008 at 10:38 am
[…] to save money? You could always just stay home and watch that new iTunes commerical. And to answer the question on everyone’s mind, no, that is not […]