Top 5 Coldplay Songs
Breaking Down My Favourite Coldplay Songs!
Ok, I am debating adding Coldplay to my top 5 favourite all time bands, except there is a section of Coldplays library that is a huge blank for me. Sounds and beats I could not gel with or felt nothing for. And yet… The amount of joy the songs I do like bring me is completely immeasurable. They backtrack through different periods of my life.
So what is it that attracts me to the parts of Coldplays library that so moves me? Well first of all, like with Brandon Boyd, when I hear Chris Martins lyrics, they so resonate with me. Poetry, words and music that moves you in motion fluid with sound. It is the piano, the rhythm and the tempo that get my feet moving, my hands up in the air with a smile on my face that is alive with the energy of the song. That to me is music. Even if I get the lyrics wrong, as often I will when singing aloud. I want to be moved by the music.
So let’s get to it.
5. CLOCKS
Clocks struck me from the first chords, the melody of the piano alone setting the tone of whats to come. When the rest of the instruments commence the energy is lifted up again. You can feel the full vibe. And then the lyrics;
“The lights go out and I can’t be saved. Tides that I tried to swim against”
One of the most prominent reasons for my love of Coldplay , as stated earlier is the lyrics. They follow the worlds with the melody. You can hear the feeling behind the words, even if they appear to not make sense in a small section like above, combined they paint a picture. This will likely be a theme behind many of the songs I have chosen for this list. Chris Martin makes the words stand out with his ethereal high and low changing vocal notes. His calling out “Ahhhhhhh, Ohhhhohhhohhhohh ohhhh” highlights this.
The next reason i love this song is the melody of the piano. The chords leading the other instruments through the story. One thng I can say is Coldplay is not the first and only band I have been drawn to because it included a piano melody. Ben Folds Five, Billy Joel and Elton John to name a few. Surprisingly it was not Elton who I was first drawn to, it was the piano man himself Billy Joel, Glass Houses was the album.
I mentioned the energy. It is not just the words being sung with Chris’ distinct voice combined with the piano. Coldplay manage to make this otherwise pleading love song into a crashing high crescendo love song about time. It rises and falls as time changes until finally we know.. home is where the story teller longs to be.
4. SPEED OF SOUND
Again it is a piano intro and then the lyrics with the rhythm of the base and drums setting the backdrop to the vocals. This forray of lyrics that I feel are a guided self journey. Words that ask questions, point to what you can see. We focus all the time on the speed of light, yet sound surrounds us all the time and hear it is asking us to look at thoughts that go by at the speed of sound.
To me it is the bass and the rhythm section that drives this song through the verses and the chorus. Which of course builds into these great vibrant crescendos of sound. Appropriate as the song is about sound and how our thoughts can move as fast as it does. There is also heartbreak, a feeling in the first verse that I know all too well! Lyrics are an important part of the way a song flows.
A theme I find through many of these songs is the energy and how they just get you up on your feet dancing around and really enjoying the music.
“All those signs, I knew what they meant. Some things you can invent! And some get made, and some get sent”
3. TROUBLE
There is a slow painfulness in this song. A person who is looking at what is happening in their life and figuring out that perhaps they have stepped into it. Starting again with the solo piano melody, Trouble is a song that is about asking forgiveness through recognition of your place in a story and its outcome. There is a brutal honesty in the chorus, when we hear, that the trouble, the harm was not intended.
The song is slow, it spins the yarn in a slow meaningful way that allows you to hear the drums, a slow jazzy sound, the piano accenting the words and phrases, that places emotions right there at the forefront. Right from the start with the piano intro you can feel the tone of the song. This is consistent with a lot of the songs here. The first stanzas of music are driving the mood and feelings of the songs.
I loved to play this song over and over again, listening to the words and the feelings they evoked. It really resonated, not in the sense that I had done something wrong and was tangled up in a drama. No, more in the way that with the lyrics above, loving someone was oftem my downfall and I felt that often that love was trouble and I wanted forgiveness for the feeling. Coldplay Therapy!
“And I, I never meant to cause you trouble. And I, I never meant to do you wrong. And I, well if I ever caused you trouble. Oh no, I never meant to do you harm”
2. Adventure of a Lifetime
The energy of this song just get me up onto my feet and moving. I love Coldplay as a dance music rock band. The intro while not a piano is an electric guitar with a little synth to it. To really appreciate the song, I feel it is almost as important to the experience of listening as it it to watch. So before I go further into the music and melody of the song with the lyrics, let’s drop the video.
“And if we’ve only got this life, And this adventure, oh then I, Wanna share it with you! With you, with you, Sing it, oh, say yeah”
The songs asks the listener to turn their magic up. Something I feel I don’t believe in anymore and then I hear the energy and feeling of this song. The way it floats with happy feet fun. I am always drawn to the lyrics in the song and how they really mesh with the energy of the music to create the emotion of feeling that I get inside. From the moment this song came out, I recall getting my niece to watch the video with me and make the moves like the monkeys.
I think that is something I really like about Chris Martins lyrics in this song, you can feel and hear the adventure of the lifetime. Like in other songs, you really feel what he is conveying. There is imagination, a sense of whimsy and a colourful painted picture of life when music and dance can be discovered. It is happiness and joy.
1. SHIVER
Here is a fun fact. I manage a digital marketing agency called ShiverMedia. I registered the name in 2002 the reason I chose Shiver is because of the song that holds my number one spot. It is absolutely one of my all time favourite songs. From the moment I first heard it until today. I absolutely love everything about this song.
Often when I hear a song it resonate for a woman I am interested in. It is easy to apply the feelings evoked in a song vicariously to a situation or circumstance in your own life. With me that is so very true. Always music was an outlet for me.
So Shiver starts not with a piano, in fact t is a melody of raw guitar notes overlayed with the strumming of a good old fashioned acoustic guitar. Its fast and almost 50s rock-a-billy sounding in the chords of the electric guitar. The song rises and falls to the feelings of the words. The pleading of the person saying he knows he is unseen, unwanted, but it matters not, the heart wants what it wants. and the cries out, seemingly in vain, to wait. Waiting on love is hard. Often it never comes and that pain is evident.
This song is not a dance song. It is a pure rock song and that is the diversity of the music Coldplay writes. Also why this song reaches the number one spot. The pain of unrequited love, the quitars and the drums the rises and the slower parts. Good well written rock and roll!
“So you know how much I need you, But you never even see me do you? And is this my final chance of getting you?”
