Review of “Coldplay: Moon Music” – “Live, Laugh, Love” in album form | Coldplay

AAmid worsening weather and intensifying war, pop music can sometimes seem pointless – and sometimes more necessary than ever. With their spectacularly sentimental 10th studio album, Moon Music, Coldplay evoke both feelings, sometimes within a single song.

Over a few “Chilled Piano to Study To” motifs, Chris Martin opens the album with a desire to be more optimistic, to “find the flight in every feather… I'm trying to trust in the sky above / And I'm trying to trust in one “to trust the world.” full of love”. The album then gives rise to this world, filled with affirmations of human potential, celebrations of non-denominational spirituality and an almost conscientious avoidance of politics – a utopia of the end of history in which cultural differences are propagated but also homogenized into total harmony.

Is this a valuable project in a time of violent discord? Or offensively hackneyed bullshit? You've probably already made up your mind: after more than 25 years of their career, few acts inspire with as much passion as Coldplay.

There's plenty to mock if you like. “Feelslikeimfallinginlove” is a shockingly generic lead single that sounds like it was written by a new algorithm called ColdplAI that crunched their entire back catalog. “It feels like I'm falling in love / Maybe for the first time,” Martin coos, and it sounds romantic until you realize it's two qualified statements in a row. One can imagine his partner Dakota Johnson wanting a little more security as Gwyneth Paltrow indignantly spits out her chia porridge – the first time, Chris?!

On 🌈 (yes, that's a rainbow emoji for a song title, dear children) there are a lot of pseudo-profound ambient orchestral waffles and a lot of half-ideas that have been processed into pointless codas in order to give the album a larger and album-like impression lend. Certain production decisions, by pop superstar Max Martin and others, provoke laughter: The dramatic strings on “We Pray” would be better suited to the soundtrack of a villainous “Apprentice” contestant grinning from a departing helicopter.

And, oof, the text: Airbnb landlords will busily craft various lines into appliquéd lettering to display on the walls of common areas (“Never forget those good feelings”), while marketing-savvy therapists will layer the mixed metaphors of iAAM — “I “I’ll be back on my feet, because I’m a mountain” – moving on to pictures of the Alps afterwards. “Till I die, let me hold you when you cry… Come rain or pour, I'm all yours,” sings Chris Martin on “All My Love,” a piano ballad so cheesy and syrupy it makes for coca -Coke could make.

And yet a lot of people will marry All My Love and you'll be there, dabbing your eyes and muttering “damn Chris”; You can't help but get carried away by the stronger songwriting on this album. For all its strange topographical imagery, iAAM is the kind of epic that only Coldplay can really muster: drummer Will Champion steals Max Weinberg's bam-bam-bam fills from Bruce Springsteen's “Born in the USA,” stripping away the irony and the social Conscience of this song you can focus on is pure personal triumph – but it makes you feel like you've climbed Everest even though you were actually just stopping by to get some milk. Jupiter is even better, one of Coldplay's best games in recent years. This song about a misunderstood queer girl feels as smooth and open-hearted as its protagonist, and this is where Martin's direct lyrics really hit home and even have social value: the call-and-response message that affirms, “I love who I love.” ” could make it an unlikely Pride anthem.

“Good Feelings” sounds like it belongs in a scene in a “Trolls” movie, where our tiny heroes have reclaimed something called “Joy Matrix” from their antagonists – all disco-funk, slap bass, French accents and U-rated lyrics – but my God, that's what it's going to sound like if you dropped double pieces of Colin the Caterpillar cake at a six-year-old's birthday party (even if it's in a more boyish or girly voice would fit better than that of 47-year-old Martin). “Aeterna” is a sort of chic Balearic banger for those who find “Fred Again” a little too progressive, but its paradoxically percussive ethereality is expertly balanced. We Pray finally ends with a strikingly heartfelt performance by Burna Boy, whose choir hopes for an end to the pain – and with his chants of Baraye, the song that defined the women's protests in Iran, and his pointed guest appearance by Palestinian singer Elyanna, We Pray briefly raises the stakes for all of Moon Music.

Admittedly, the album ends with a terrible piece of music, One World's Sigur Rós pop symphonies, over which Martin decides, “In the end it's just love,” as if he could bring about world peace if only he could give it to Putin and Netanyahu really nice hugs. The truth is that love is not enough to defeat all the polyvalent evils facing humanity – and Coldplay's weakness is its failure to do justice to this complexity. But that naivety and stubborn optimism remains intoxicating and is also her greatest strength.