The new Coldplay album, Mylo Xyloto is out. I’ve been waiting since June because I wrote this post mentioning Coldplay and some thing, perhaps human, perhaps a bot, alerted me that Every Teardrop is a Waterfall was out. I checked it out, found the song on YouTube, and read the comments. The comments led me to more songs. I liked them all quite a bit so it’s been a long wait for the album which came out just last week.
It is indeed a 45 minute album and thus a throwback to the eighties when it was easier to write solid albums, not the 60 minute monstrosities that became commonplace in the late eighties to mid noughties. I’ve been watching and listening to these Coldplay songs on YouTube for months. Indeed the album is filled with them. But two that I found did not find a place on the album.
Moving to Mars was on the Every Teardrop is a Waterfall EP but is not on the album. Another song, Don Quixote, said it was a new song but also was not on the album. I don’t mind. I only listened to either song a couple times. It was obvious which songs I liked. I played them numerous times.
Mylo Xyloto is filled with the songs I listened to numerous times plus a couple, Don’t Let it Break Your Heart and Up With the Birds which I had never heard before. I believe that Coldplay and the music company were deliberately experimenting on me and the others doing the same thing. The numbers probably let them know Moving to Mars and Don Quixote were weak and thus the substitution of these songs on the album with new ones.
I kind of like my vote being counted, still it’s kind of creepy when you realize what happened.
I’d like to compare this album with an eighties one, So by Peter Gabriel. It is also a solid 40 minute album. In retrospect I find the promotion of it to have been one dimensional. The songs I know as singles, Sledgehammer and Big Time and Don’t Give Up(with Kate Bush) were rather one sided. These songs were kind of the same and releasing them as singles gives no inkling that the great Red Rain and In Your Eyes were on that same album.
Indeed, I went for years not knowing Red Rain was from this album and didn’t hear In Your Eyes till modern reality TV singing shows. So, record company and Peter Gabriel, I did buy the album but years later. So I got it used and you missed a payment from me. The album is a pillar of my CD collection.
Similarly Coldplay released Every Teardrop is a Water Fall, Paradise and I bet next they will release Princess of China (featuring Rihanna). Generally, these are the keyboard based songs. They’ve ignored the great Charlie Brown, Hurts Like Heaven and Us Against the World – more guitar based tunes. If you don’t show the variety, fewer people might purchase the album.
Still, I think it’s a better album than So. Which is why I couldn’t wait to buy the CD.
And on the back of the CD are 14 symbols which obviously represent the 14 songs. Someone else might understand the symbols for Hurts Like Heaven, Us Against the World, and M.M.I.X. I think the last symbol should be 2009, but it isn’t. If anyone knows how these symbols apply to these songs please let me know.
In the negative column, the CD doesn’t come with lyrics. Perhaps the bots will try to keep tabs on us by watching the statistics at lyrics sites. Again, creepy.
