Coldplay

Coldplay are, today, the biggest rock band in the world, and one of the most divisive: you either love them or you find them cloying, but ignoring them is impossible.

In barely two decades they went from four shy students making melancholy guitar songs to a stadium-anthem machine, with confetti, light-up wristbands and crowds of a hundred thousand singing along.

That journey —from intimate vulnerability to global spectacle— is their story, and it explains why they inspire so much love and so much rejection at once.

Four students and a yellow song

Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland met in September 1996, during their first week at University College London. Guy Berryman joined later, and in January 1998 Will Champion arrived on drums, completing the line-up.

They went through a couple of names before settling on Coldplay, that same year. The name was handed to them by a fellow student, who had taken it from a book of poems.

Their first album, "Parachutes", from 2000, was shy, acoustic, melancholy. It won the Brit for British Album of the Year in 2001 and the Grammy for best alternative music album the following year.

And on that record was "Yellow", a simple, luminous love song that became an instant anthem and introduced them to the world.

With their second album, "A Rush of Blood to the Head", from 2002 —"Clocks", "The Scientist", "In My Place"—, they made the leap: from promising newcomers to one of the best bands of their generation.

In those early years they were filed away in the wake of two bands: Travis, who had opened up that melodic, emotional path, and above all Radiohead, to whom the British press compared them endlessly. Not always fondly: Alan McGee, the man who had discovered Oasis, dismissed them in a famous article as music for soft students.

From intimacy to the stadium

And here is the turn that defines them.

They could have stayed the band of sad, pretty songs. But Chris Martin had an enormous ambition, to be the biggest band on the planet, and to get there they did something risky: they made everything bigger.

With "Viva la Vida", from 2008 —produced by Brian Eno alongside Markus Dravs, Jon Hopkins and Rik Simpson, with that choral, historical song about kings who fall—, they left the indie group behind and became stadium titans.

From then on, album after album, their music grew more colourful, more pop, more designed to make crowds jump: collaborations with Rihanna, with BTS, with The Chainsmokers; concerts that are giant parties of lights and confetti.

They have won seven Grammy Awards, all between 2002 and 2009, and industry estimates credit them with more than a hundred million records sold —a figure that, like all figures of that kind, nobody audits—. What is beyond argument is that they sell more tickets than any other band in the world.

Why they divide people so much

That same journey explains the rejection they stir up in a section of the public.

For many, Coldplay became too sweet, too eager to please, too carefully designed to be liked by everyone: stadium pop in its most polished and least dangerous form. They turned into an easy target for the jokes of those who prefer their rock raw.

And there is something to it: they traded the fragile melancholy of their beginnings for a luminous, mass-scale optimism.

But there is something undeniable on the other side too. Few bands have written so many songs that genuinely move so many people.

"Fix You"

The best example has a story behind it that almost nobody knows.

In October 2002, Bruce Paltrow —television director and producer— died in Rome, where he had gone to celebrate the thirtieth birthday of his daughter Gwyneth. About three weeks later, Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow met. In other words: the relationship began right on top of that grief.

In the house there was a large keyboard that Bruce had bought his daughter shortly before he died, and that nobody had ever plugged in. Martin plugged it in, found a sound he had not heard before, and out of it came "Fix You", a song about staying with someone in their pain. She confirmed it years later: the song was about him trying to put her back together after her father's death.

That song became an anthem of consolation that plays at funerals and in the hard moments of millions of lives.

You can find Coldplay cloying and, at the same time, recognise that "Fix You" or "The Scientist" touch a nerve few songs reach.

What to remember

Coldplay are proof that a band can choose to be enormous, and pay the price of that choice.

They traded intimacy for immensity, and with it they won the world and lost the people who preferred the small, sad group of the beginning.

Put on "Yellow", "The Scientist", "Clocks", "Fix You" or "Viva la Vida", and you will hear a band that knows, like few others, how to find the melody that makes a whole stadium sing with tears in its eyes.

Like them more or less, they did something difficult: songs that console, that keep you company, that soundtrack the important moments of ordinary people.

And in a cynical world, daring to be sincere and hopeful on that scale takes its own kind of courage.

Coldplay gambled on moving millions, and it worked, even if some people are a little embarrassed to admit how much.

Sources

Coldplay, British rock band made up of Chris Martin (vocals, piano), Jonny Buckland (guitar), Guy Berryman (bass) and Will Champion (drums). Martin and Buckland met in September 1996, during their first week at University College London; Champion completed the line-up in January 1998, the year the group took the name Coldplay, handed over by a fellow student who had taken it from a book of poems. Phil Harvey, a friend of Martin's from Sherborne School, financed their first EP and is considered the band's "fifth member" and creative director. Their debut album, "Parachutes" (2000), included "Yellow" and won the Brit for British Album of the Year at the 2001 ceremony and the Grammy for best alternative music album at the February 2002 ceremony. "A Rush of Blood to the Head" (2002) —with "Clocks", "The Scientist" and "In My Place"— consolidated their standing. In their early years the British press compared them above all to Radiohead, and also to Travis; the "next Travis" tag circulates in secondary sources without support in the press of the time. Alan McGee criticised them in an article in The Guardian in July 2000. With "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends" (2008), produced by Brian Eno alongside Markus Dravs, Jon Hopkins and Rik Simpson, they widened their sound towards the epic and the massive, and on later albums took in pop, electronics and collaborations with Rihanna, BTS and The Chainsmokers. They have won seven Grammy Awards, all between 2002 and 2009. Industry estimates put their sales above 100 million records —some recent sources speak of 160 million—, claimed figures that no certifying body audits on a global scale. "Fix You", from "X&Y" (2005), came out of the death of Bruce Paltrow, father of Gwyneth Paltrow, on 3 October 2002 in Rome; Chris Martin and Paltrow met some three weeks later, and Martin has said he wrote the song on a keyboard Bruce had bought his daughter shortly before he died and that nobody had got round to using. Travis and U2 have profiles of their own on Rebobinados. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, grammy.com, The Guardian, Songfacts, PopMatters and other press coverage.