Purple Rain, Paint it Black, Red Red Wine — some of the most iconic songs of all time are intrinsically linked to color. And, in my mind at least, yellow belongs to Coldplay — sorry to The Beatles and their submarine.
However, what tint, tone, or shade of yellow the band's best-known song brings to mind is another question. I think I've always been led by the slightly haunting melody of the song and the picture of the overcast beach from the Yellow music video into imagining it as something quite pallid, but as Jane Boddy, the creative director at the Pantone Color Institute and Livingetc's own color expert, points out: "Really, it's a song of optimism and feelings of love, joy, and happiness."
