Coldplay treat every album like it’s their last, and since X&Y, they’ve been threatening to end their career. “Bands shouldn’t go past 33,” a then 31-year-old Chris Martin said after Viva la Vida. A Head Full of Dreams was also “the end of something.” Now, at 47, Martin is finally serious, with a concrete plan for two more albums after their latest, Moon Music. Coldplay’s music may have stagnated in recent years, but consistent releases have fueled their emergence as titans of the concert industry. Their Mylo Xyloto shows were the first to widely deploy the LED wristbands that are now staples at Taylor Swift shows, and their Music of the Spheres tour brought innovations in sustainability, like “kinetic dancefloors” enabling the audience to generate energy for the concert. That magic-of-music whimsy is why their live show is so beloved and their studio records so reviled. It’s hard to see the dark side of life when an audience’s joy literally powers you.
Take the audience away, and it’s a bit dicier. With track titles including “🌈” and “GOOD FEELiNGS,” Moon Music has already been dubbed the “most ‘Coldplay’ Coldplay album,” but what that means has changed as the band has transitioned from melancholic balladeers to starry-eyed stadium behemoths. They’ve escalated so much—looking at the stars to traversing the galaxy—that naming an album for the moon is scaling back. Claiming a middle ground between the streamlined pop of Music of the Spheres and the eclecticism of Everyday Life, Moon Music demonstrates all the reasons to be sick of Coldplay, and all the reasons they’ll be missed when they retire for real.
Though Max Martin is again at the helm, Moon Music sounds like the work of a band for the first time since Viva La Vida. That might seem faint praise, but Coldplay are at their best as a four-person unit rather than Martin & Martin. When Chris is the only audible member until the obligatory Jonny Buckland guitar licks on the outro (a formula repeated on “Magic,” “Higher Power,” and “Something Just Like This”) the effect is faceless; when all four hit like the fine-tuned stadium band they’ve become, it’s much harder to resist. Look at the lyrics of “iAAM” and laugh when Martin compares himself to a mountain and a Greek god, then try not to pump your fist when that trademark upright piano sound announces the chorus. Even “Man in the Moon,” from the deluxe version, gets away with its tinny Buggles rip by unashamedly doubling down on youth-group call-and-response silliness. That silliness puts Coldplay out of touch with a pop zeitgeist enamored by wit; it’s also made them bigger than almost any artist in the world.
In interviews surrounding the record, Martin’s on defense, eloquent (if still naive) about embracing “uncoolness.” “If you were allowed to be yourself, would the world be as aggressive as it is?” he asked The New Yorker’s Amanda Petrusich: “I think much of the violence and conflict [in the world] comes from repression, suppression, and unreleased damage.” That’s all the justification Coldplay need to indulge in childlike wonder. But big emotions needn’t mean simple ones, and childlike wonder doesn’t have to mean regressing to the most banal possible sentiments. That’s when there are sentiments: The words heard most often on this album are “la la,” and around half the songs end in a wordless singalong. When Martin sings, “La-la-lay/That’s all, all I can say” on penultimate track “All My Love,” he’s practically daring someone to go, yes, Chris, we know!
When Coldplay remember their strengths, they wind up with their best material in years. “Jupiter” is a genuinely lovely ode to a woman discovering her affection for other women: It’s thoughtful in a way Coldplay haven’t been in a long time, the rare post-Ghost Stories song to successfully return to the intimacy of their early work. (“Don’t give up” means more when it’s sung to one person than to 80,000.) “Aeterna” sidelines lyrics for an ambient dance shuffle, as bassist Guy Berryman takes precedence over Martin’s digitally altered falsetto. With a backbeat lifted from jazz eccentric Louis Cole’s “Weird Part of the Night,” it’s the kind of stylistic detour that makes you wonder why they’re still recruiting the Chainsmokers to co-write a song called “GOOD FEELiNGS.”
That unpredictable quality control makes Coldplay frustrating to defend or dismiss—for every questionable choice, there’s a 6-minute nu-jazz vamp or classical prog-pop opus waiting around the corner. Only Coldplay would make a song called “🌈,” but only Coldplay would make it the record’s most beautiful and exploratory song, too. What starts as another “Fix You” retread gradually becomes blissful, as if Martin had been listening to Cocteau Twins and Sigur Rós while making Parachutes instead of Jeff Buckley. So it’s all the more aggravating when a song like “We Pray” fails to live up to its potential. Some of its choices are courageous: a feature from Palestinian Chilean artist Elyanna and a name-drop of the Iranian protest song “Baraye.” Burna Boy and Little Simz do their best with soulful guest appearances. But “We Pray” is once again padded out with “la la”s and simple sentiments, so overstuffed that there are two alternate versions with different verses. The production falls completely flat: There are Imagine Dragons songs with harder-hitting 808s.
At their best, Coldplay are capable of things no other act of their size can pull off. There’s just enough charm on Moon Music to demonstrate why they’ve lasted this long, why no misbegotten hip-hop exercise or clunky lyric can stop their reign. Another bonus track, “The Karate Kid,” is as good a plaintitive ballad as any they’ve written. The lyrics are still nonsense on paper, and it’s hard to know whether the song’s “Daniel” is an original character or the actual protagonist of The Karate Kid. But the specifics don’t matter: The song is a rare moment when Martin sits with a loved one’s pain instead of trying to fix it, and so the inevitable lines about making dreams come true feel earned. Or in the parlance of late-era Coldplay: They still remember that there’s 🌧️ before the 🌈.
