Having conquered the whole world, Coldplay are clearly aiming for the moon with their 10th studio album, Moon Music, released on Friday, October 4. The group, formed in London in 1997 by Chris Martin (vocals, piano), Jonny Buckland (guitar, keyboards), Guy Berryman (bass) and Will Champion (drums), is not afraid of excess and has become first and foremost a huge machine whose numbers make your head spin.
More than nine million tickets have already been sold for the “Music of the Spheres” world tour, which launched in March 2022, played four nights at the Stade de France and will end in September 2025. It will then be the most lucrative tour of all time, dethroning even Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour.” To ease Chris Martin and his band’s ecological conscience, energy for the concerts is 100% renewable (solar and kinetic).
Although the “Yellow” and “The Scientist” hitmakers claim to have reduced their carbon footprint by almost 60% compared with their previous tour, the approach, however laudable, has raised other questions. What about the emissions generated by air travel to concert venues? The reforestation campaign, which plans to plant seven million trees from ticket sales to offset the tour’s emissions, has fuelled criticism of greenwashing, while the band has continued to fly from city to city.
In this climate-heavy context, Coldplay’s music has almost seemed to take a back seat. Their 10th studio album, Moon Music, is presented as the second part of Music of the Spheres, released in 2021. No fewer than six producers have been credited, including Swedish pop mogul Max Martin (Taylor Swift, The Weeknd), who the band has previously worked with.
Federative one-upmanship
The overall tone is reminiscent of the variegated synth-pop developed since Mylo Xyloto (2011), though with an increased presence of string arrangements on virtually every track. But Coldplay no longer fit into the rock box, with their last guitar-oriented album being Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends in 2008. Chris Martin now prefers to indulge his interplanetary pop ambitions with an arsenal of keyboards and arena-tuned choruses, a formula profitably unrolled on the hits “Paradise” and “A Sky Full of Stars.”
The first single, “feelslikeimfallinginlove,” tended to reassure die-hard fans, with its sunny, candid chorus but the English band soon fell back into their federative electro-pop overkill, advocating the mixing of cultures, with varying degrees of taste.
The second single was the most striking example of this with “WE PRAY” (written stylistically in all caps), a Bono Vox-style appeal for world peace, with hip-hop production brought to the fore. The track features a flurry of young stars, with British rapper Little Simz, Nigerian Burna Boy, Chilean-Palestinian singer Elyanna and Argentine Tini. Still, Chris Martin managed to slip in an effective melody amidst all his guests.
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