Chris Martin sure seems ready to be done with Coldplay.
He’s presumably not over busting out chart-topping albums with his long-running band. I suspect he doesn’t hate making hundreds of millions of dollars with record-breaking tours. I didn’t mean what I said in a bad way.
He just seems to have a definite idea of what he wants the Coldplay career arc to be, and it’s not in the vein of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds pumping out their 18th album, or Neil Young his 45th, or Willie Nelson his 153rd. No shade to those guys, as there’s nothing wrong with their approaches: Get that bread for as long as you still can and want to. But, Martin doesn’t see that version of the Coldplay story coming to pass.
I’m not just making stuff up, stirring the pot for clicks as Coldplay gears up to release their 10th album, Moon Music, in a few days (your click is appreciated, though): This is all coming straight from Martin’s mouth.
In 2021, he declared, “Our last proper record will come out in 2025, and after that, I think we will only tour. Maybe we’ll do some collaborative things, but the Coldplay catalog, as it were, finishes then.”
He tweaked his position in 2022, saying, “We’re going to make 12 albums, because it’s a lot to pour everything into making them. I love it and it’s amazing, but it’s very intense, too. I feel like because I know that challenge is finite, making this music doesn’t feel difficult. It feels like, ‘This is what we’re supposed to be doing.'”
That’s the plan he’s sticking to. In a new interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe shared on September 30, Martin reiterated, “We are only going to do 12 proper albums and that’s real.” He added:
“It’s really important that we have that limit. First of all, there’s only […] eight Harry Potters, or seven Harry Potters. There’s only 12-and-a-half Beatles albums. There’s about the same Bob Marley, so all of our heroes. And also having that limit means that the quality control is so high right now, and for a song to make it, it’s almost impossible, which is great. And so where we could be kind of coasting, we’re trying to improve.”
Coldplay having a clear finish line in front of them radically changes the band’s mindset and operation, as Martin indicated. Maybe it should change how we look at their output, too.
I was a Coldplay enthusiast, as many were, during the A Rush Of Blood To The Head and X&Y eras. But, as their sound and my personal tastes have changed over the years, I haven’t been feverishly consuming what Martin and company have been making. That’s not to say Coldplay is bad now — so many people still love what they’re doing. It just looks like my personal path has crossed with Coldplay’s trajectory for the last time. I’ve X’d my last Y, I’ve fixed my last you, I’ve clocked my last… “Clocks.”
Why is that so? Maybe it’s because once Coldplay fell out of my sphere, I envisioned an endless stream of albums that eventually reach the stage many legacy artists do with their output: LPs that sound like hollow, AI-generated versions of previous work, released primarily so the band can say they have new music when they go on yet another greatest hits tour. Especially since I’m not particularly invested in what Coldplay is doing now, why bother going down with the ship?
Well, Martin isn’t letting the ship sink: He’s docking it before it starts taking on water. Coldplay’s not rambling on until nobody’s paying attention anymore: They’re telling a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end.
Suddenly, Coldplay’s career arc is contextualized and given a firmer narrative structure. They established themselves with Parachutes. They made aesthetic pivots on the way to global success with A Rush Of Blood To The Head, X&Y, and Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends. Finally, they’ve found consistent comfort with Mylo Xyloto, Ghost Stories, A Head Full Of Dreams, Everyday Life, and Music Of The Spheres, while Moon Music‘s role in this story remains to be seen.
Coldplay stans might take exception with that outline: I, by my own admission, haven’t really been paying attention to that big run of albums I lumped together at the end. The point, though, is that the band isn’t going to Walking Dead themselves from reverence to irrelevance: They have a clear, stated plan to end things on their terms, before overstaying their welcome.
My position is this: A band I once loved is treating their legacy and overarching body of work with care. Armed with a new perspective on an old favorite, maybe it wouldn’t hurt if I started caring, too. Maybe I haven’t mylo’d my last xyloto, ghosted my last story, or mooned my last music.