At some point, they must have gotten tired of claiming to be anything out-of-left-field or highbrow artistic, because their newest album finally finds them firmly embracing their status as a mega-hit pop band and not apologizing for it. They got sued for hitting a little too close to home on ideas they’d (perhaps subconsciously) borrowed from other musicians.
They got reamed by the press for that attitude more than for the music, I sometimes suspect. Despite that, something about them was still a tad pretentious, looking up to their heroes in bands like U2 and trying to claim a stature just as big and world-dominating. Coldplay finally wised up and learned how to subvert a lot of their own tropes on their fascinating fourth album, Viva la Vida or Death and All Its Friends, which for me was the first album that realized their true potential.
That album and the somewhat misguided follow-up X&Y had its experiments, but for the most part they veered toward a safe, plodding piano sound that they did reasonably well but that grew tired after several iterations and seemingly every other rock band with a pianist front and center trying to imitate it. It only took two albums for the band to discover stadium-sized bombast and plant themselves into the center of pop culture’s collective consciousness with A Rush of Blood to the Head a few years later. I guess not all “alternative” music has to sound grungy, but I certainly wouldn’t have used the label on anything that genteel. It was shy, mostly acoustic and understated, much more Britpop or folk than rock. I enjoyed that album for being something a little different, at least in relation to most of what was in my music collection at the time.
Shoot, I’ve considered it ridiculous to call them “alternative” every since they won the Alternative Grammy for their debut album Parachutes. After noting the numerous accolades and megaton album sales that Coldplay had been pulling, he quipped, “At what point can we stop calling you ‘alternative’?” Obviously, Colbert was far from the first to make this observation, but it got a chuckle from the band’s lovably goofy lead singer, as if to say he’s well aware of the band’s status as the most mainstream of rock bands. Satirical pundit Stephen Colbert made a rather witty observation not too long ago when he interviewed Chris Martin. In Brief: It’s too poppy for a lot of critics, and sometimes the cliches bug me, but I’ll admit to loving the bright colors that Coldplay uses to spray paint every wall.
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