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A fair amount of the songs are good and catchy, with only a few mediocre ones and a couple great ones. (Photo provided by @coldplay via Twitter). 

Coldplay’s ‘Music of the Spheres’ feels inconsistent

Coldplay holds a special spot in pop culture for late millennials and early Gen Z-ers. The Britpop band is responsible for hits like “Yellow,“ “Clocks” and “Viva La Vida,” which have all been rather popular for the better part of the past two decades. But, its latest release doesn’t quite live up to its past efforts. It’s not necessarily a bad album, it just doesn’t quite reach the status of the other albums.

Music of the Spheres feels like a desperate attempt to appeal to everyone. While the cosmic imagery carries the album in terms of theme, the songs all have very different feels, and it seems as though the band is trying to take all of the good aspects of their past albums, give them a space-rock twist and compile them into one album. Sure, diverse songs are often good and show the artists’ songwriting talents, but it comes off as disjointed. It even seems like a lot of its songs have different styles within them. 

This is likely because of two reasons. The first is the fact that for the past 20 years or so, the band has been trying to outdo themselves, which is extremely commendable. After breaking onto the charts with their debut album, Parachutes, they’ve been constantly trying to live up to, and surpass, their previous efforts, which puts an immense amount of pressure on the band. The other reason is Coldplay’s 2019 album, Everyday Life, was the band’s first album in recent years to not break the top five on charts. 

Still, Music of the Spheres was diverse, yet unified, and the songs all carried strong messages relating to global politics, love and finding beauty even in all of the bad places of the world. It was experimental, and all of the lyrics were unabashedly honest. 

However, previous albums all had their own style, whereas Music of the Spheres does not. Rather, the band combined their ideas for commercial appeal. They pulled a massive 180 and tried to make an album that was less thematically radical by their standards. It seems like they figured that if they tried to do a bunch of different things, everyone would have something they liked on the album. 

We see this in certain tracks such as the guitar-driven “People of the Pride.” This song carries the dramatic theatrics of Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. The ten-minute “Coloratura” is quiet and somber, much like their album Ghost Stories. Most of the songs feel like they were derived from other popular albums.

The quality of the songs varies as well. While none of them are flat-out bad, they range from mediocre to genuinely good. Tracks like “Let Somebody Go” and “Human Heart” were somewhat boring, but not necessarily bad. Some songs were actually quite good. This is apparent in songs like “Higher Power,” a funky synth-pop song about being happy while loving someone again. It’s a gleeful showing of Coldplay’s power over pop-rock and music as a whole. 

However, the best track on the album is without a doubt, “My Universe.” While the inclusion of BTS as a featured artist still shows the band’s desire to please the masses through another popular group, it doesn’t feel like it here. The South Korean and British groups blend together seamlessly into an optimistic and hopelessly romantic electro-pop track. The song is happy, bright and all about falling in love with someone and wanting to put them in every aspect of your life. The English lyrics are cheerful and idealistic, and the Korean lyrics are beautifully poetic and flowery.

Overall, the album is fine. It’s not amazing, but it’s good. A fair amount of the songs are good and catchy, with only a few being mediocre and a couple being great. If the tracks with lyrics were all released separately, I believe it would have been better because it wouldn’t have seemed so jumbled. 

@alicia_szcz 

as589820@ohio.edu

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