Amid worsening weather and worsening war, pop music can seem pointless at times – and more necessary than ever at others. Coldplay induce both of these feelings, sometimes within the space of a single song, with their spectacularly sentimental 10th studio album Moon Music.
Over some Chilled Piano to Study To motifs, Chris Martin opens the album wanting to be more optimistic, to “find the flight in every feather … I’m trying to trust in the heavens above / And I’m trying to trust in a world full of love”. The album then wills that world into existence, filled as it is with affirmations of humanity’s potential, celebrations of non-denominational spirituality, and an almost scrupulous avoidance of politics – an end-of-history utopia where cultural difference is championed but also homogenised into total harmony.
Is that a valuable project in an age of violent discord? Or offensively trite bullshit? You will probably have already made up your mind: over 25 years into their career, few acts inspire both hand-waving and eye-rolling with quite such passion as Coldplay.
There’s plenty to scoff at, should you wish. feelslikeimfallinginlove is a dismayingly generic lead single, sounding like it was written by a new algorithm called ColdplAI that’s digested their entire back catalogue. “It feels like I’m falling in love / Maybe for the first time”, Martin coos, and it sounds romantic until you realise that’s two qualified statements in a row. You can imagine his partner Dakota Johnson wanting him to be a bit more certain about it all, while Gwyneth Paltrow spits out her chia porridge in indignation – the first time, Chris?!
There’s acres of pseudo-profound ambient-orchestral waffle on 🌈 (yes, that’s a rainbow emoji for a song title, fellow kids) and plenty of half-ideas worked into pointless codas to make the album feel more grand and album-y. Certain production choices, by pop supremo Max Martin and others, provoke laughter: the dramatically dramatic strings on We Pray would be better suited to soundtracking a villainous Apprentice contestant smirking out of a departing helicopter.
And, oof, the lyrics: Airbnb landlords will be eagerly working up various lines into appliqué lettering to post on the walls of communal areas (“don’t ever forget those good feelings”) while marketing-savvy therapists will be overlaying the mixed metaphors of iAAM – “I’ll be back on my feet again, cos I am a mountain” – on to pictures of the Alps post-haste. “Until I die, let me hold you if you cry … Whether it rains or pours, I’m all yours”, Chris Martin sings on All My Love, a piano ballad so corny and syrupy you could make Coca-Cola from it.
And yet plenty of people will get married to All My Love and you’ll be there dabbing your eyes, muttering “dammit Chris”; one can’t help but be carried off by the stronger songwriting on this album. For all its wonky topographical imagery, iAAM is the kind of epic that really only Coldplay can muster: drummer Will Champion steals Max Weinberg’s bam-bam-bam fills from Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA, removing that song’s irony and social conscience to focus on pure personal triumph – but it does make you feel like you’ve climbed Everest when you’ve actually just popped to get some milk. Jupiter is even better, one of Coldplay’s very best of recent years. This song about a misunderstood queer girl feels as limber and open-hearted as its protagonist, and this is where Martin’s on-the-nose lyrics really work and even have a social value: the call-and-response message affirming “I love who I love” could make it an unlikely Pride anthem.
Good Feelings sounds like it belongs to a scene in a Trolls movie where our diminutive heroes have reclaimed something called the Joy Matrix from their antagonists – all disco-funk, slap bass, blurts of French touch and U-rated lyrics – but my god it’ll sound good when you’ve double-dropped slices of Colin the Caterpillar cake at a six-year-old’s birthday party (even if it would suit a more boyish or girlish voice than 47-year-old Martin’s). Aeterna is a sort of posh Balearic banger for those who find Fred Again a bit too progressive, but its paradoxically percussive ethereality is expertly balanced. We Pray ends up being elevated by a strikingly heartfelt performance from Burna Boy, his chorus hoping for an end to pain – and with its chants of Baraye, the song that defined the women’s protests in Iran, and its pointed guest spot from Palestinian vocalist Elyanna, We Pray briefly raises the stakes for the whole of Moon Music.
The album admittedly closes on a terrible piece of music, the sub-Sigur Rós pop symphonics of One World, over which Martin decides “in the end it’s just love”, as if he’d bring about world peace if only he could give Putin and Netanyahu really nice hugs. The truth is that love is not enough to conquer all of the polyvalent ills that humanity faces – and Coldplay’s weakness is in not doing justice to that complexity. But that naivety and stubborn optimism remains intoxicating, and it’s also their greatest strength.
• Moon Music is released on 4 October
