My biggest fan, Holly, shot me a load of questions. So, I’ll do my best to answer them one at a time. Here’s the first one:

In the beginning, Coldplay was an amazing band with a very vulnerable, and very human touch, which was what made them so appealing to me. Their first album, Parachutes oozed with beautiful emotion and delicate simplicity. They followed it up perfectly with Rush of Blood to the Head, which was a little bolder, but kept that very human touch.

Then, with their 3rd album X&Y they declared that they wanted to be the biggest band in the world, and decided to accomplish that by morphing into a semi-decent replica of U2.

That brings us to their 4th, and most recent album: Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. They managed to regroup and pull away from the U2 image pretty well, and I will admit that what I have heard of the album is well produced and enjoyable to listen to, but I won’t be buying it. It’s not the Coldplay I love. They left behind the beautiful vulnerability in pursuit of the “biggest band in the world” sound.

In memory of that amazing sound that once was, here’s a track from Parachutes that illustrates perfectly what it was I loved about them: