The Daily Spin, December 28
Coldplay | A Rush of Blood to the Head
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite songs from each album right here.
Album: A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002)
Artist: Coldplay
Link:
When I was really getting into discovering my own music taste, back in the early 2010s, Coldplay was one of my go-to artists. This was around the time that Viva La Vida and Mylo Xyloto had come out, not even getting into the fact that I had been raised on tracks from X&Y and this album, 2002’s A Rush of Blood to the Head.
As I got older, Coldplay became a bit more ‘cringe’, as much as you can ascribe that trait to an artist - part of this was baffling decisions like the animation for their ‘Adventure of a Lifetime’ music video in 2015, and the general movement of my own taste away from what Coldplay had done best - that soft rock, a little bit weepy in its lower moments.
What I’m saying, really, is that I haven’t so much as touched this album in the better part of a decade - sure, I listen to ‘The Scientist’ sometimes when I’m sad because it’s a fantastic little song to hurt a bit to, but that’s about it - and yet, here we are.
After listening to this album, I reach two conclusions: one, that I’m right. This album is a little cringeworthy, earnest almost a fault while rarely saying all that much, and it’s pretty messy - with all of the corniness that I’ve come to feel is so distinctly Coldplay that it hurts - and yet the second conclusion, frankly, is that no other band, corniness and all, could have ever made songs like ‘Clocks’, ‘The Scientist’, or ‘Daylight’ - a three track run that qualifies as one of the better in modern music, in my wholly qualified opinion.
As Chris Martin just kinda… wails, I guess, into the distance, with everything else feeling like a Rube Goldberg machine tumbling down around him, singing about some semblance of a home he yearns for, it all clicks. Yes - this album isn’t a 10, by any stretch. It’s a little frayed and messy, and outside of some of these towers of monumental legacy, the rest of the album feels a little pale and drained - but god. You realize what a fitting title this album holds when the sound comes at you, dazzling, bright, forever expanding and filling the world around you.
Rating: 7.8/10
Best Tracks: The Scientist; Clocks; Daylight
Worst Tracks: A Whisper; Politik