12 Coldplay Months of 2011: January (12 exciting months ahead!!)

[howyousawtheworld]

January saw the start of a year which would turn out to be a massive 12 months for Coldplay and their devoted fans the world over! That said, the band were still keeping things very much under wraps, leaving everyone in the dark as to the details of the untitled LP5.

Following the revelation in December 2010 that the album would be a concept album about "two like-minded outsiders who meet in a very difficult environment and therefore have a journey together" more small teasers were released on Zane Lowe's Radio 1 show on the 7th January when Chris Martin and Will Champion popped in for a chat. Asked about the album Chris stated that it was "about love, addiction, OCD, escape and working for someone you don't like". He added that it was a "thinly veiled account of what happens within the group". He went on to add that the record would have "a lot of uplifting stuff. It's supposed to be about life, the good stuff and the bad stuff. Everything."


In preparation for what would be a big year Janaury also saw the creation of a devoted Coldplayers channel on youtube - ColdplayingTV. A channel devoted to news, updates and debate on the band as contributed by the members of the Coldplaying.com forum. Though used perhaps sparingly in the near 12 months it has existed, no one could fault the efforts and time taken up in creating such a channel for Coldplayers.

COLDPLAYING TV - HELLO/Titles + Outtakes - YouTube

Away from Coldplay, Chris Martin was also said to have written songs alongside country singer Faith Hill, according to Hill's husband Tim McGraw, who starred alongside Martin's wife, Gwyneth Paltrow in the film Country Strong.



"My wife is a huge Coldplay fan, and they spent a lot of time writing songs," McGraw told a surprised Chelsea Handler during E!. "I don't want to start any rumours or anything, but I ain't heard any songs yet!"



Chris also found time to attend, and perform alongside his good friend Gary Barlow at the Take That singer's 40th birthday celebrations. Below is the audio of their performance of the Take That classic Back For Good!

Gary Barlow ft. Chris Martin - Back for good - YouTube

While the band continued to slog over songs in the studio, they delighted many of their fans on the European continent as they announced a number of summer festival dates including Spain, Portugal, France and Sweden. Rumours of a Glastonbury Headline slot refused to die down. For many it was merely a question of who would perform alongside expected performers Coldplay and U2, with the latest rumour being that The Rolling Stones were the third headline act for the year.



But the rumour mill continued to turn on LP5 though as NME surprisingly gave Coldplay a bit of their precious time (most of which devoted to Kasabian no doubt) to talk about their forthcoming album in a January edition of the music mag. Here they discussed their belief how they've yet to produce their masterpiece as more discussion on slated songs for the album 'Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall' and 'Princess of China'. NME also added to the rumour mill of the release date for LP5, believing it to be set for, um, spring.

Here is the article:

Deep inside Coldplay's North London studio, The Bakery, Chris Martin sits surrounded by lists, or what he calls "obsessive compulsive disorder displayed, in the written form: the singer's job, I think." On desktops, on walls, on whiteboards, on bits of paper... everywhere you look is a list - a potential tracklisting, Brian Eno's 10 commandments - that has to do with Coldplay's forthcoming, as-yet-untitled (more lists) fifth album.

Firm details are scarce at present: the pool of songs has now been narrowed down from dozens and dozens, although Chris confirms that there is still "a lot of narrowing to do... which is better than trying to thicken. We were with Brian Eno for a long period just messing around. Now we're with Marcus (Dravs) trying to turn that into something cohesive and under seven hours long. The worst mistake we could make, when we're the Marmite-y of bands, would be to make a super-long thing..."

Dravs was brought in because of Arcade Fire. "When we were thinking about making the last record, I was talking to Win (Butler)," Chris says. "We'd just met with Brian Eno and he'd said, " We also need another person, because I like to do the sort of sowing of the seeds, the more abstract stuff, but we also need a woodchopper guy who's gonna organise everything.' Win said, 'You should try this Guy Marcus, he's crazy but he's really good."

Is he crazy? "No, he's wonderful, and he's extremely talented, but he's brutal: 'This is terrible', or 'This is great'. He's extreme. And he's been making such great work with everybody else. He cracks the whip a lot. One of the dangers of getting a bit successful is that no-one pushes you quite so hard. But we don't have that problem at the moment."

Plenty of ideas and concepts have been jettisoned, including one that came from drummer Will Champion, involving him standing up playing a bass drum and an acoustic guitar. "We started working on that idea for about three weeks," smiles bassist Guy Berryman, "then we all broke for Christmas, and we came back having seen the same TV show, with Mumford & Sons on it. And it was like, 'Oooooooooh no. That's got to go.'"

A couple of the songs from that period - including the Christmas Lights single - survived. There were loads that emerged from the soundchecks. Now there is a final 12... but all without titles. "We have a song called 'Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall'," says Chris. "That's my favourite title, although I'm not sure which song it goes with. There's been about 12 different ones. It's like playing Snap. The original 'Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall' was branded 'terrible' by the rhythm section, and so had to be dismissed. So even before we release anything to the world, it's been slagged off!"

Chris is more sure of the lyrical direction: "I found that with 'Viva La Vida...', the song I enjoyed writing from someone else's perspective to actually get out what I was feeling, I've got one song from a girl's perspective called 'Princess Of China' which is very female. I wonder what that says about me?"

Coldplay's return is set for spring, in time for a slew of festival headline slots (including their third Pyramid Stage top slot at Glastonbury, if rumours are to be believed). Chris recognises that the band cannot get much bigger in terms of audiences, saying that the aim with this album is "to sing to individual people in their bedrooms as much as a lot of people". He's aware that many will hate his band's new record whatever, but doesn't care anymore. "We still don't believe we've delivered our masterpiece, so we're still trying to do it. As long as we feel like that and we're hungry... that's all that matters."

Recorded: Coldplay's London home studio
Producer: Brian Eno/Marcus Dravs
Released: No date yet, expected spring

That's not all what the NME had to write about the band though in the month of January. Their second album (and to many their finest) 2002's A Rush of Blood To The Head made it onto a list of the "darkest albums ever made" with the feature on their website describing it as "Featuring burning cities, wars and dead romance, Coldplay's second effort wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs".




The album also featured in a list of Do's and Don'ts of second albums writing that:

"Coldplay's first album 'Parachutes' was perfectly pleasant - and 'Yellow' was a massive hit - but it lacked guts. Thankfully, they ditched the jangliness and worked out how to write songs as streamlined and impactful as 'Politik' and 'Clocks'. The result was 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head', and a band that looked like world-beaters, rather than students."

2002 perhaps proved they were world beaters. But the question on every Coldplayers lips in 2011 was whether they could do it again. The next 11 months it seems would reveal all!

[Violet]

Nice job, man. It serves as a great precursor to February, which I hope to have up early tomorrow morning.

[nancyk58]

Thanks for a great review of January 2011. Well done!

[busybeeburns]

great start, thankyou!

[howyousawtheworld]

Thank you for the kind comments guys! Look forward to reading the other reviews!

[Alien Radio]

Nice review!

[Raphaele]

thanks