Love is blind, so for Dakota’s sake, let’s hope it is deaf, too
Chris Martin reportedly asks his new lover’s opinion on Coldplay’s music, but should she respond tactfully,
IT seems Chris Martin can finally stop gatecrashing his ex-wife’s dates. In November, Gwyneth Paltrow shared a snap on Instagram of ex-husband Martin sitting with her new boyfriend, director Brad Falchuk, with the caption “Sunday brunch #modernfamily”.
According to gossip magazine Us Weekly, Martin is now dating actress Dakota Johnson. “Multiple sources” have told the magazine the two are now an item, with several eyewitnesses gladly dishing on the dinner dates the two have shared.
One source disclosed Martin allegedly “sends Dakota his music to get her opinion”, and one particularly nosy onlooker told the magazine that while at dinner he even “hummed a little bit and asked her what she thought of a song”.
If this is true (which I hope it is), oh, how my heart goes out to Dakota. It’s one thing having to tell your date that you can’t stand their favourite band, but another thing altogether if your date happens to be said band’s lead singer.
There may still be people out there who genuinely like Coldplay but by and large, the band has become a byword for passe. Coldplay are courgetti, man buns and cold-shoulder blouses. They are not yet disliked enough to make an ironic comeback in hipster circles — Abba is currently holding court in that spot, which would indicate that Coldplay have another few decades to go before they’ll be considered cool again.
Even Martin is aware that his band is a cultural punching bag. He parodied himself on an episode of Ricky Gervais’s brilliant 2007 series Extras — and that was before Martin and Paltrow had ‘consciously uncoupled’. In the episode, Martin plays a vainglorious version of himself who plugs his band’s new album at every possible moment, including while taping a ‘save the children’ charity video.
Sometimes, this winkwink nudge-nudge approach to addressing your own unpopularity works wonders because you’re seen to be a bit of a laugh. You’re aware that you are uncool and not afraid to say it. A quick Google on the subject would indicate this did not work for Martin.
It seems people really, really don’t like Coldplay. There are several Reddit threads dedicated to it. In 2011, The New Yorker published ‘Why Don’t We Like Coldplay? An Investigation’. The UK’s Independent newspaper, online music magazine Noisey and fashion magazines Vogue and Nylon have all pondered the question, along with countless other websites and forums. Liam Gallagher, himself a divisive frontman, has a particular disdain for Martin and his band, describing them as “beyond s**t”, “a bunch of students” with a lead singer who resembles both a geography teacher and the Tweenies.
It is ironic, of course, that a band that is really despised is also really successful.
Perhaps it is their success that turned people against them, or maybe Martin’s high-pitched warbling can only be tolerated for so long. That conscious uncoupling certainly didn’t do him or Paltrow any favours in the likeability stakes. Perhaps Johnson really does like Coldplay. We’ll never know. But what if, like the vast majority of people, she doesn’t? What is the appropriate response if you find yourself in a romantic relationship with somebody who is an objectively questionable artist? The type of person who might direct a tortuously bad immersive theatre experience, or who giddily shows you their new sculpture series crafted from old sanitary towels, or who hums you their new Coldplay song.
One of the most popular podcasts of 2017, My Dad Wrote A Porno, is one man’s response to a terrible book authored by his own father. Each episode of the audio series is dedicated to a chapter of the soft-core novel which is dissected by the author’s son and his two co-hosts.
The father-son relationship has remained intact, probably in most part due to the father’s sense of humour. But it’s hard to imagine the same dynamic working between two lovers. Perhaps the only reasonable response is to quietly part ways.
A friend of mine recently started dating an oil painter. When she showed me the paintings, I breathed a sigh of relief both for myself and for my friend. The paintings were very good, and I was spared the excruciating pantomime of cooing over some really bad art.
Later, I asked my friend what she would have done had she been shown the artwork and hated it. She deadpanned, “Slowly cut off all contact”, and I don’t think she was joking, because how could you be in a relationship with somebody whose passion and output you considered to be poor at best, embarrassing at worst?
If you can’t genuinely support their endeavour, then perhaps it’s not meant to be. But then, they do say love is blind. And for Johnson’s sake, I hope it is deaf, too.
’Martin’s warbling can only be tolerated for so long’