It opens with a Martin solo at the piano, pleading about the complications of love: “Come up to meet you / Tell you I’m sorry / You don’t know how lovely you are.” Love, he suggests, will always be unexplainable by reason and logic: “Science and progress,” he sings, “do not speak as loud as my heart.” The band enters to build the song higher and higher, as Martin’s falsetto croons to the heavens.Įvocative and universal sentiments of love and freedom pervade most of Coldplay’s music, but the band have experimented with the packaging on each and every album. “Nobody said it was easy / No one ever said it would be so hard.” On the second single from A Rush of Blood to the Head, Martin touches us all on what is perhaps Coldplay’s most touching ballad. There’s the three-note atmospheric guitar riff, the arena-filling straight drum beat, and Martin’s introspective lyrics about your lot in life, expectations and realities aimed at everyone’s jugular: “In my place, in my place / Were lines that I couldn’t change / I was lost, I was lost / Crossed lines I shouldn’t have crossed.” Then, of course, comes the memorable chorus: “Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh, how long must you wait for it?” The Rush of Blood to the Head single went on to win Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal at the 45th Grammy Awards and become a fan favorite and live staple. It’s a hallmark Coldplay song that’s both grand and sweeping and deceptively simple and universally understood. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, notching the band’s first Top 10 hit in the U.S. It was the lead single from their third album, 2005’s X&Y, and was their most successful song to date, debuting at No. It’s built around another catchy, looping piano riff and its driving drums, waves of guitar and rising synths build to a peak that makes the listener feel like they’re floating at, well, the speed of sound. There won’t ever be another one like it.Like “Clocks” before it, this tune is prime mid-career Coldplay. “ For you I’d bleed myself dry.” That line, this song, deserves the world. It’s about blind romance, at once hopeful and resigned, that swears to remain true until death demands it to stop.
There might be other songs, more complex songs and less earnest songs, but from Coldplay, there is no better song. Here is devotion at its most unblinkered, a rock-solid promise, a supernova love letter. “ Look at the stars” held so much that the rest flowed like silk, the acoustic guitar swerving out of focus just when that overdubbed, historic central riff needed it to. A clear night’s sky and a simple, tranquil appreciation of it led to the opening line. Like so many masterpieces, ‘Yellow’ was born in a bolt of lightning. Why would you give away your most important secret? The story behind Coldplay’s most successful track, their best track, has kept changing since 2000, and probably always will. The phone directory that was lying on the table – they will never let you know. It could be about the colour of a coward. There are a million different truths about ‘Yellow’. With additional words from Andrew Trendell, El Hunt, Hannah Mylrea and Sam Moore Here then, ranked in order of greatness from worst to best, is Coldplay. Hidden tracks, however, are allowed and celebrated, as are charity and festive offerings. But we’ve banned all unreleased tracks, included no covers and counted nothing from ‘Los Unidades’ (which is probably for the best). Some criteria before we get going: instrumentals are allowed and included, as long as they are not purely transitional or recycling the loops of another full track. To celebrate 20 years since the release of their still-great debut album ‘Parachutes’ on July 10, 2000, behold: a full, colourful, impassioned ranking of every single Coldplay song to date.Ĭoldplay (Picture: Samir Hussein/Redferns/Getty)
From embracing indie rock to trying out nu jazz - and dipping their toes into electropop and EDM as well - they’ve also always been hungry to have a go at anything and everything when they get to it in the studio. When you come to appraise the 20+ years of Coldplay material on offer – music written by the four people who forced the world to invent new synonyms for “heartbreak” – a study of every single Coldplay track actually teases out much more nuance and variety than the straightforward moans and groans of some of the saddest guys in the business might suggest.Ĭomprising of Will Champion on drums, Jonny Buckland on guitar, Guy Berryman on bass and Chris Martin on vocals – and, when he fancies it, guitar, piano and whatever else he can find - Coldplay have often been cocky, sometimes political but always furiously fascinating.
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