Excursion #4 • Coldplay
Welcome Back
This, our 4th adventure in the Pop Time Machine, will have us landing in the year 2000.
Leaving right now for....
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Excursion #4
Summer 2000
Surviving Y2K & Watching MTV
To review, this blog is all about music and pop culture, with the little twist that the goal is to help you virtually retro travel through space and time. 🚀
In this next outing, we experience some of the transition into the new century (and millennium - a new word in our collective vocabulary). Try and imagine yourself there with me (not too hard, only 20 years ago). We somehow survived Y2K, after years of being told the world might end because of flawed imbedded calendar dating systems in computers and even satellites. We were told it might not allow them to shift four whole digits, from 1999 to 2000. It was a little disillusioning to think that in our modern, high tech world, we had really been that stupid!
Well, suffice to say, it is now 2000, and we are still here. No nuclear missiles accidentally launched, and you can still use your credit card at the gas station. However, Prince’s big hit from the 80s, “Party Like it’s 1999” is now relegated to air play in classic rock formats. The mystery is gone. No apocalyptic zombie take over or Mad Max movie scenarios. However there is still no sign of flying cars, which we have been implicitly promised in pop culture, from The Jetsons to Back to the Future! Very disappointing! Oh well! 2000 made for great sunglasses shaped like the number 2000. At least that worked out well.
Well, in my little world, 2000 is a transition year. I’ve just changed career direction, and am starting a new job. I’m feeling a little disillusioned with how things have worked out in life, and I’ve become somewhat jaded, perhaps adopting some of the 1990s cynicism that has taken over the world.
One evening I turn on the TV and start channel surfing, while contemplating what I want to do with my life when I grow up. So that naturally takes me to MTV to check out any new music videos - for you younger readers, 2000 is a time when MTV (Music Television) actually played music! It was before their producers decided to bless the brain dead airwaves with meaningless reality shows, mind numbing talk shows, or profound programming contributions to art in the modern free world such as Paris Hilton’s My New BFF, Doggy Fizzle Televizzle, the timeless dramatic masterpiece Jersey Shore, or who could forget Beavis and Butt-head, that pinnacle of television creativity! Someone please shoot me! Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you?! Or where are you Andy Griffith, or I Love Lucy? We desperately need you to give us new hope!
Oh, the decline of Western Civilization - a fascinating thing to behold. But I digress.... Where was I? Oh yes, watching MTV. Well, to my actual delight, they play a new video by a relatively new band who call themselves Coldplay. It is a great song, and a wonderfully simple video. The song is called Yellow. The singer, Chris Martin, is simply strolling up the beach singing his song to you or whoever will listen. Did I mention it’s a great song? And now I remember what I want to do with my life. Be a rock star of course! But it’s too late for that. I’m too old. So, I settle for enjoying a moment of hope for the future of music, following the grunge gripped sadness of the past decade (my apologies if you are a Nine Inch Nails fan club member - I think they might have support groups for that). Oh dear, I fear my cynicism thing might be showing a bit too much.
I guess the point is I love Coldplay. Okay, I said it out loud (well, I wrote it out loud). Coldplay represents a kinder, gentler form of alternative rock that I can relate to. And sitting on my couch, remote in hand, I realize that this is my new favorite song (Yellow), and Coldplay is my new favorite band. It isn’t a profound song - very simple really. No one really knows what “yellow” even refers to, but it doesn’t matter. There’s just something about it. It’s good music. It makes me feel good. I’m in need of a feel good moment, and here’s this song, this video. Strange thing how powerfully music effects us. Not a rational thing I guess - more intuitive.
And I later will come to find that I am not alone. As time goes on, Chris Martin and his band keep doing it. Year after year, album after album. It’s just good music. To the tune of selling 100 million albums over time so far! That makes them one of the best selling artists of all time.
Parachutes, their debut album, sold 8.5 million copies. A Rush of Blood to the Head, 2nd album, sold 14 million copies worldwide and won the 2003 Grammy for Best Alternative Album. X&Y, 3rd album, was the best selling album of 2005, and ultimately sold 13 million. Viva la Vida, 4th album, won the 2009 Grammy for Best Rock Album. It was the best selling album of 2008, and sold over 10 million copies. There is more, but I think you get the idea.
Another “British Invasion?”
The success and popularity of Coldplay seems to be part of a bigger picture. It may just be my tendency to generalize these things, but there is clearly a recurring theme involving waves of amazing music from the British Isles. Consider the following ongoing trends:
(1) 1st British Invasion - Mid/Late 1960s (launched by the Beatles & many others) - see my blog “excursion” entitled “The British Invasion” for more and a list of the groups.
(2) 2nd British Invasion - Early/Mid 1980s. This influx paralleled and fueled the rise of MTV which launched in 1981. Artists involved include: The Police/Sting, Tears for Fears, Gary Numan, Pretenders, Eurythmics, Dire Straits, Wham!/George Michael, Duran Duran, Bananarama, Spandau Ballet, Elvis Costello, Culture Club, Depeche Mode, A Flock of Seagulls, The Human League, Pet Shop Boys. Yep, all from the U.K. That’s only a partial list!
(3) 3rd British Invasion - Late 1990s-Early/Mid 2000s. Something called Britpop (we’ll say more in a future entry) includes Oasis, Suede, Pulp, Spice Girls, Westlife; and the post-Britpop emerged with Radiohead, the Verve, Coldplay, Snow Patrol, and the Arctic Monkeys. Following on the heels of Coldplay and the others in the next several years came English acts the likes of Amy Winehouse, Estelle, Joss Stone, Adele, Duffy, Natasha Bedingfield, Florence and the Machine, Jessie J, and Leona Lewis, to name a few.
And that doesn’t even factor in Elton John or David Bowie - yes, both British. I realize this is a lot of information, but if you enjoy music trivia, hopefully you find it interesting as I do.
Anyway, all that having been said...my focus today is my simple appreciation for one band on this list, probably the most high profile, and my personal favorite, Coldplay. I hope you might take a closer listen if you never have, or if it’s been a while since you’ve listened in.
One final observation about Chris Martin and this band: the sense of humanness and self-awareness which they seem to possess can be clearly seen. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way audiences around the world spontaneously join in and sing along to the song “Fix Me.” And this is so often with tears in their eyes and hands in the air, almost as if they are entering into a kind of worship experience. So powerful are the emotional triggers built in to the song. It was written by Chris Martin for his wife, Gwyneth Paltrow when she lost her Dad, actor Bruce Paltrow. The loss was devastating; it took a long time to work through the grieving, and to recover.
In cities around the world, the same response happens with that song, which is a powerful tool to enable and empower the grieving process. Martin had originally envisioned the song with a church style organ. But instead he used an old keyboard that Gwyneth’s Dad had once given to her as a gift. Listen carefully to the attached live concert performance of that song. You might find that it allows you to really identify with the feeling of grieving, perhaps brings to mind a loss through which you’ve passed. You might also need a box of tissues.
Well, thank you for indulging my little visit with the nostalgia of twenty years ago. 2000 was definitely a watershed year - only happens every 10 centuries or so. And this simple song release was also a watershed for this band. The song Yellow, which launched them into years of great music, and even a lot of giving through donations and many benefit concerts.
Well, it also helped me to leave behind some of that 1990s cynicism I mentioned earlier. Life is too short to not try to believe the best in people, at least when you can. I continue to learn more about that as time goes on.
And speaking of time, it is time again to return “back to the future,” and to rejoin reality. Sorry.
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Well... if you come back and check out our next excursion, we will be returning once again to the 1960s, and have a little fun making the scene of “Flower Power.” Far out man! Trippy!
That’s next time... Wear your grooviest threads and of course, a flower in your hair...
Wow. Can’t believe I said that.
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A Video is worth a thousand words:
Enjoy a few performances below of various Coldplay hits, beginning with the chart topping single “Yellow,” from 2000, that started it all:
Coldplay: “Fix You” Live in Concert at “One Love Manchester.”
Coldplay: “Viva la Vida” (Official Video)
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Check out this Spotify Playlist of songs, The Best of Coldplay:
Check out this Spotify Playlist of songs from artists of the Third British Invasion (2000s):
Until next time....
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