I standby what I wrote, and if new single Adventure Of A Lifetime is anything to go by, things haven’t improved since I wrote that post more than three years ago.
Well, that’s half true. The thing is, Coldplay remains one of the most talented bands of its generation. It’s no fluke it is one of the world’s biggest bands. A few things I’ve seen over the years since asking “WTF” happened have given me heart. As humans, they appear to have remain grounded and awesome, even if their music —at least to my old ears — doesn’t reflect similar characteristics.
Martin has been undertaking more inspiring philanthropic work, most recently as part of the Global Citizen Festival, where he announced he would dedicate the next 15 years to doing whatever he could to help Global Citizen reach its goal of ending extreme poverty in the world by 2030.
And this week, as part of what is likely to be a long round of promotional appearances for the band’s upcoming seventh album, A Head Full Of Dreams, he and his band-mates appeared on BBC Radio 1 to partake in an hilarious segment which saw Martin compose, on the spot, songs written from boring lyrics sent in by listeners. Check it out here.
It’s great to see that the guys remain grounded, and that Martin has lost none of his cheeky charm. He’s clearly in a happy place.
But they say the best music comes from heartbreak. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, and it’s perhaps why Coldplay’s tunes have taken such an upbeat turn over the past few years. Take 2014’s smash hit A Sky Full Of Stars, taken from the album of that same year, Ghost Stories. You could not imagine a more cheerful track if you tried. It’s been a super live anthem, for sure, and I guess that’s something. It always gets a crowd bouncing and smiling, and there is nothing at all wrong with that. It’s really only the studio version that is a touch lame.
There were hints, however, of Coldplay’s former glories on that record, not least in Midnight, which provided a beautiful and mystical midway point on an album of otherwise reasonably chirpy tunes. Midnight is a more modern take on Coldplay’s former signature sound, but it’s got all the superbly simplistic qualities of what I used to love so much about their old sound.
Let’s hope a little more of that aesthetic has crept into this new album. It’s set for release on 4 December, so we don’t have to wait too long to find out.
Jay-Z spinning his message at the Tidal launch (YouTube)
When I was growing up, I used to visit lots of record shops. I had my specialist shops – usually Shades (RIP) in Soho, London. I had the mainstream outlets – Tower Records (RIP), HMV. I had local record stores, good for white label rarities. Even WH Smith, a newsagent, used to sell music. I think my sister and I bought our first LP there. While some more niche tastes weren’t available in the bigger stores, I could usually find them somewhere else. And for the most part, you could buy the same record in several different locations.
What’s baffling me now is why musicians and their labels, particularly those who have already made millions of dollars, are trying to reverse that in an age where we’ve never had it so good in terms of access to music in multiple formats.
The recent launch of Tidal – the music streaming service backed by a billionaire’s row of Jay-Z, Beyonce, Madonna, Jack White, Rihanna, Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Coldplay, and others – has tipped me over the edge. And it can stick its “lossless audio” tag up its overly-inflated egotistical backside.
Are we really expected to subscribe and pay for music on yet another platform? Are these artists really going to start removing their works from Spotify and other services, locking them away on their own platform to service nothing more than themselves? Seems that way, given Jay-Z has already pulled his 1996 album Reasonable Doubt from Spotify and put it on his new toy.
Thank goodness I’m old enough to earn a wage, because if I were back in those youthful days I described earlier, I’d be struggling to keep up with this so-called “revolution”. A $10 subscription here, another one there; it all adds up. I could be spending $50 a month. If these artists were ever to tour my town, I wouldn’t be able to afford a ticket – which will probably be in excess of $100, let alone a t-shirt and souvenir programme.
Jay-Z, who paid $56 million for Tidal – an illustration of his wealth – and his cohorts claim the platform offers a better model for musicians because it has no freemium tier, unlike Spotify and Pandora, which continually bear the brunt of high-profile millionaire musicians’ protestations. It streams music in the highest possible bit-rates, which only a handful of us with a sound system good enough to showcase that could benefit from anyway.
But regardless of that, is this really the right way to go if you want to save the music industry and spark creativity? Personally, I don’t think so. Tidal claims to offer artists higher royalties than other services, but how its lower-tier artists will benefit has not been made clear. And without a huge subscriber base, which will be very difficult to build given the competition, the proportion of cash left over after Jay-Z and his pals have lined their pockets is likely to be paltry at best.
As Randall Roberts pointed out in his excellent analysis of the topic, there are much better ways to benefit poorer artists if you’re int the lofty position of a global music superstar.
“A true artist-friendly revolution would involve an action more substantial than investing $56 million and holding a press conference,” he wrote. “For example, how about financing a Kickstarter-type service for musicians seeking funding, one owned and operated by successful artists interested in furthering the development and bank accounts of their less-fortunate peers.”
Hear hear. That’s far more pro-active than just making everyone pay more, creating an eco-system where music discovery is a pain in the arse. All these guys are doing is turning people away from music, putting up barriers, and making it less likely that kids will ever be inspired to create music of their own, and possibly release the tunes future generations will love and cherish.
So what’s the answer?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting music should be free and that’s that. I also don’t claim to have all the answers. But there is certainly room to think outside the box here.
It’s a fact that if you love an artist enough, eventually you’ll pay for the stuff they produce. I’m a paid subscriber to Spotify. I think $10 a month is reasonable, considering I’m only getting streamed audio, not a physical copy of anything. I’ll use Spotify, free services like SoundCloud and YouTube, and other platforms like BandCamp to sample things, and when I’m hooked, I’ll pay more for a CD or record, dig a little deeper for a concert ticket, and sometimes order a deluxe vinyl box set. But I’ll only do that if I’m able to hear that music for free somewhere in the first instance, whether it be on a radio station or a streaming service.
Think about it. It’s the oldest model in the book. As an artist, you’d record something, try and get some radio airplay, build a following via that “free” platform to a point where you might play a live show, make more money there on the door, sell some merchandise, including your CDs, and the snowball is rolling. It’s not rocket science. The only difference now is that instead of waiting for your song to come on the radio, a punter can discover it on demand, at their leisure. What these artists seem to be missing here is that there is so much less noise around them. People can go directly to your tunes without waiting two or more hours to get through a DJ’s curated playlist to hear it. That’s so powerful. What an opportunity.
Getting radio airplay is a nightmare unless you’re sleeping with the network programmer or have friends to give you a leg up. Now, you don’t need them at all. Some smart social media marketing can get you heard, and on a platform like BandCamp, you’re not restricted to a few royalty payments. You can set your own price, set up a subscription service if you want, sell other merchandise, too. You don’t need a label. You just need some desire and drive. And there is room for freemium models, in my opinion. It’s been shown that by offering a free service, you can drive higher paid subscriber numbers. That’s not exclusive to the music industry, of course.
Let’s not pretend the concept of free music is something new, either. How many of you used to record the Top 40 on a cassette tape and listen back to it over and over, week after week, without ever going to a shop to buy the records played in it unless you really loved them? Technically, that was illegal. But nobody cared. Musicians were banding together to remove tape recorders and Walkmans from kids’ bedrooms. But they’re doing the equivalent now, and trying to brainwash us into believing it’s a good thing.
I thought back to Taylor Swift’s swipe at Spotify in amongst all this. Why is she angry when it pays 70 per cent of its revenue back to the rights holders of the music it hosts? “Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for,” she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. Absolutely, Taylor, and thanks to models like Spotify and BandCamp, many more people are paying for music again, and the user numbers have only gone up since they all launched. Spotify has succeeded in growing revenues for both labels and artists in every country it operates in. Why spoil the party now?
The irony of all this is that many musicians who haven’t made it big are often prepared to give their music away for free, whether via playing a live show or uploading tunes to SoundCloud, YouTube, Facebook, or other platforms. They want people to hear it. After all, music is nothing if it’s not heard. How is Tidal going to help them? Will they be offered a place on the platform? Of course they won’t.
The revolution is not in what Jay-Z and Co are doing. The revolution is, and always has been, the responsibility of the consumer. We’ve been down this road before with Napster. The actions of its founders John and Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, while questionable to some, revolutionised the music industry’s outdated distribution model, and drove creativity by allowing artists to share music that would otherwise never be heard because of the restrictive interests of record labels and mainstream radio. That’s a lot more than Tidal is offering.
There is money to be made, but who ever got into the music business for the cash? Only a fool would do that. The payoff is a bonus. I felt sick hearing Jay-Z and Madonna, sit at the table like some wise professors, harping on about how this is getting back to the music, the art, the creativity. Please.
What irks me most is that these highly-privileged few, who have already made their money from us, feel they have the right to dictate to us how we consume our music, and claim it to be for the betterment of the industry as a whole.
Overwhelmed by the metal … Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins (YouTube)
I stumbled across a Twitter post the other day which was a still of Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music, speech bubbles coming from her mouth with “The ace of spades, the ace of spades” written in them. Of course I laughed, thinking of her singing the seminal Mötorhead track of 1980.
Never for a moment did I think I’d ever actually get to see Julie Andrews do a death metal version of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. But, thanks to the genius editing of Andy Rehfeldt and his YouTube channel, here it is for your own enjoyment.
Rehfeldt has created a number of similar works for his channel’s sub-playlist Metal Versions, including songs by Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and more modern artists including Adele and Coldplay. Carly-Rae Jepson’s Call Me Baby is particularly funny.
But when it comes to Julie Andrews covers, let’s tip our hats to Lady Gaga, whose quite brilliant Oscars medley of her musical efforts will live long in the memory.
It begs the question: is Lady Gaga the most talented female musician of her generation? I’d argue she’s certainly up there. She proved in this performance that show tunes, Broadway theatre, any musical genre is not beyond her capabilities. Her jazz with Tony Bennett is magnificent, and having seen her live in 2014, I can confirm her pop is off the chart.
Julie Andrews herself certainly appeared to be appreciative of the effort, given the heartfelt hug she delivered to Gaga at the end of her Oscars show. Would Andy Rehfeldt receive similar love for his work? I reckon he would. Julie’s a wonderful woman, with a great sense of humour. Not that I know her – I just imagine she would be laughing with the rest of us at his effort this week.
How I missed this record in 2012 is a mystery. Scouring through my RSS and cleaning up posts from late last year, Imagine Dragons record Night Visions it was on a list of favourite albums for The Blue Indian’s Luke Goddard. Thought I’d give it a spin, and I’m so glad I did. Sort of.
Goddard somewhat misled me with his opening line. “Good grief. I love this band,” he writes in his post, where he placed the record at No.6 in a list of 12. High praise in my book, but he goes on to say, “Not every song is gold, okay? But it’s still ahead of the rest of the releases in my list simply because the handful of moments that are gold shine brighter than any of the other records behind this one.”
He’s right, but for me that is a massive frustration. The opening track, Radioactive, is a dubstep-beat-backed gem and provides so much promise for what is to come. Track numer two Tiptoe is similarly impressive in a completely different way. It’s got a Coldplay-tinge to it, a chirpy chorus and that radio-friendly sound of summer that proves to alluring to the kids around town at this time of year (Down Under, at least). It’s Time is a song that has been used, probably anonymously to most, in movie trailers and other silver-screen moments, but thereafter the album struggles to lift for me.
The middle hump is disappointing. I felt like Apollo 13 command module pilot Jim Lovell must have felt when he told Houston he had a problem and they promptly told him he had to come home. All that energy packed into the launch, the euphoria of being blown into space, the buzz, the beauty of outer space, then a bang, and a broken spaceship. To use and Australian parlance, “Bugger”.
That’s pretty much how I felt when Night Visions got to its midpoint, and On Top Of The World, the middle track, was impossible to get through. I persevered and was brightened slightly by Hear Me, which had a Killers feel to it, but then I was lost again, and unlike Lovell wasn’t sure if I’d make it home.
I wonder if this band will find itself with a bunch of tours and some new material inspired by what it sees and experiences around the world. I hope so, because there is clearly some talent in the Las Vegas quartet. Fronted by drummer Dan Reynolds places them high on my cool list, but The Eagles they are not. Not yet at least. I guarantee we’ll hear a bunch of their songs on trailers and TV promo shorts, particularly Bleeding Out, which is perfect for a Twilight sequel or other teen vampire saga, if it hasn’t already been used.
All up, there is such a mish-mash of sounds on this record, I’m not sure where it sits. It seems confused. There are elements of Fun in there, the soaring beauty of Keane at times, but some of quirkier tracks, Underdog fo example, seem a little contrived. But hey, that’s just me. I’ll listen to half the album with pleasure, and leave the rest aside.
I remember the first time I heard Coldplay‘s music. It was late 1999 (I think). I picked up a copy of an EP called The Blue Room, which featured five tracks on it. I would later discover that this was the band’s first release under the Parlophone label that they’d recently signed with.
Coldplay, wondering why they don't think their music sounds shit when every one else does.
I thought it was magnificent at the time – still do actually. It was such a unique sound, and Chris Martin’s vocals were like nothing I’d ever heard. Soon after that came Parachutes, the band’s debut album. I got it before it was released. I was so excited by their sound. I loved every track, one of which, Don’t Panic, appeared in a different form on the EP.
Fast forward a decade or so, and I’m lost for words again about Coldplay’s latest release. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Again, it’s a unique sound, like nothing I’ve ever heard.
Trouble is, it’s uniquely shit.
Colpdplay was one of those band’s I thought I’d like forever, like Death Cab For Cutie, or Elbow, or Sigur Ros. But every time they’ve released a record, it’s been short of the one before. A Rush Of Blood To The Head, their second album, was OK. The Scientist is a beautiful song, and I always liked Warning Sign too. There were other good tracks on there, but none with the quality of the Parachutes tracks.
The production was up-scaled on A Rush Of Blood To The Head somewhat, in my view to the band’s detriment, and that trend continued into X&Y, which again only had a couple of tracks on it I liked. Then there was Vida La Vida, an odd title for an equally odd record. Upon listening to opening track Life In Technicolour, I remember thinking: “Oh, OK. We’re back on track here. This is good.” But then every other track failed to inspire me. By the end of the album, they’d lost me. I couldn’t take it anymore.
The sad thing is that’s made me listen to the older stuff less. I cranked Shiver from Parachutes as I was writing this and thought: “Wow. That’s a fucking great song.” It’s simple. There is nothing complicated about it, but it’s just a great song. Structurally sound, lyrically interesting – just good all over.
And now, in mid-2011, they deliver Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall to our ears. A lot has already been written about this track, but very little of it good. Many have said it sounds like a 90s disco track. I can’t disagree. The first thing that came into my head when I heard it was the Mardi Gras gay, lesbian and bisexual parade that happens every year here in Sydney. Believe me, that’s not a good endorsement. It’s just bog-standard awful. Have a listen, if you dare, and then read on.
My girlfriend said to me what’s happened to Coldplay is like someone who takes a great photograph, and then touches it up so much with Photoshop that it ends up looking completely weird and shit. She’s so right. Coldplay no longer represents the band I loved so much all those years ago.
So what went wrong? It’s like they’ve had their song put through some sort of weird-ass pop machine by the record company executives at Parlophone in the hope that millions of dollars a spat out of the other end. Stadium rock just isn’t their bag. I wish they’d wake up and realise that, but while the money keeps rolling in, it’s unlikely that will happen.
It’s sad. Perhaps the track’s title – teardrops and waterfalls – is some sort of metaphor for what any fans that remain are going through as they hear this new track. One thing is certain – I won’t be going to see them live again until they find a cure for their sickness. It’s just not worth it anymore.
Postscript: Seems I’m not the only person thinking this way. here’s a fun post from popbitch on the possible inspirations for this track.
Light+Shade 