Life in technicolor
How Coldplay is consciously recoupling with A Head Full of Dreams before fading away
By this, their nearly 20th year as a collective, Coldplay have become less a cultural force than an analogue for a certain musical formula. A soggy heart on your sleeve prescription for sadness that distils the euphoric bacchanal and cheesy lyricism of forbearers Oasis and U2 into a fun for the whole family testament to optimism. Each song methodically engineered to appeal to the widest audience in the most base emotional manner, often starting with a shallow verse to lead into a propulsive chorus or lifeaffirming crescendo. It’s a winning method made all the more successful by the fact that they’re universally appealing. As John Mayer once told Spin magazine, “( Coldplay) found a way, identity-wise, to be from everywhere.” In other words, they succeed by being bland yet universally touching.
This makes the group’s seventh, and reportedly last, album their most aptly titled. A Head Full of Dreams is so saccharin that, at times, it feels out of step with the modern era. Through touchstone heavenly woos, guileless apparitions and arena- minded riffs, it dares the listener to stop thinking and start feeling. All wrapped up in a Beyoncé-featuring bow. It’s enough to make one wonder, as a band whose gestures only come in size Grand, is the Coldplay formula antiquated or simply an honest reflection of their state of being?
Drifting across a foggy Italian motorway “somewhere between Marino and Milan,” Coldplay drummer Will Champion says the album’s overtly positive message is no coincidence but, likewise, was “not cynically devised in that way.”
“It’s just seems to be the way things come out quite often,” he deadpans over the phone in a taught British accent. “Trying to convey the message of optimism in the face of all the dif- ficult things that you can go through in life — whether they’re trivial or seriously big events.”
In turn, Champion says A Head Full of Dreams was meant as a “breath out,” both on a macro (“In uncertain times, with terrible things happening frequently all over the world right now, we wanted to have a record which inspired people to come together and work with each other rather than emphasizing the differences between each other”) and micro level, envisioned years ago as a colourful companion to the dark, EDM-infused melancholia of their last album, Ghost Stories, which focused on singer Chris Martin’s divorce (conscious uncoupling) from Gwyneth Paltrow.
“We knew right from the word go that we were going to follow ( Ghost Stories) with something that was a bit more grand: a bit more in an extroverted and positive.” Champion says. “They were always going to be together: the breathing in and then the breathing out.”
With this in mind, the group didn’t tour Ghost Stories, hoping to give Martin and their audience a chance to digest. Champion thinks back to this time as a bonding experience for the group.
“As with any bunch of friends it was about support really,” he says. “We’re very protective of him as he is the guy that takes a lot of the heat for us. He’s obviously the face that’s most associated with our band. The dynamic was not particularly different, it was just a different mood of music. We worked as hard and in the same vein as we always do: trying to all push in the same direction.”
“I felt privileged that he was being able to be so honest with his feelings. The stuff that was coming out in the songs, I felt a very strong sense of wanting to do it justice,” he continues. “It was obviously a difficult time and he bore it all with such good grace.”
By contrast, Champion calls A Head Full of Dreams “the most fun record that we’ve recorded.”
“There wasn’t as much head scratching and self-doubt as there has been in the past,” he says. “That was the concept: to feel free of any sense of expectation. This album represents the things that we’ve learned are important and the things that we’ve learned aren’t so important. It’s really trying to emphasis the idea of a band as togetherness. It was really quite refreshing.”
Despite the superlatives, Martin has not exactly been shy in explaining to the press that it will likely be the group’s last album. Confronted with his singer’s statements, Champion acknowledges that it’s been discussed amongst the group, but acquaints Martin’s statements with Daniel Craig’s hastily and since recalled degradation of James Bond shortly after finishing the latest film
“I’m hopeful it’s not going to be our last album,” he says in typical Coldplay form. “but we don’t have any other ideas at the moment.”
“We spent the last 18 months recording this record and we don’t have any ideas,” he repeats. “So when someone asking if this is our last one we can’t really see beyond that fact that we’ve now got an opportunity to tour this record around that world. That’s what we’re really looking forward to.
“Beyond that, who knows? We don’t really know what’s going to happen in a couple of weeks, let alone a couple of years.”
I’m hopeful it’s not going to be our last album, but we don’t have any other ideas at the moment