video review: 'everyday life' by coldplay

Anyone who thinks critics enjoy making these kinds of reviews... yeah, no, this wasn't fun. I wanted to like this WAY more than I did.

And while I'm on that subject, I've got Beck up next - stay tuned!

album review: 'everyday life' by coldplay

It feels like it's been longer than it's actually been since I talked about Coldplay.

Now for you all that has more to do with Warner Music Group throwing a copyright block on my review of the last album to take it down worldwide only days after it was posted - because spineless violations of journalistic fair use are fun for the family - but the larger truth is that I just haven't had much incentive to seek or discuss Coldplay in the 2010s. Sure, they had a single pop up on my year-end list of the best hits of 2016 - that being 'Hymn For The Weekend' with Beyonce - but to be perfectly candid, it was more of a factor of the Hot 100 in 2016 being an absolute garbage fire rather than the song being a credible standout.

And yet this isn't coming from someone who as a critic dislikes this band, even if they've given me plenty of credible reasons - for the most part I like Coldplay, and they're incredible live. But if I were to compare the cyclical melodic progressions, strident crescendos, and willowy wistfulness of their best material across the 2000s, the 2010s have seen them flailing with pop and electronic pivots that don't fully play to those strengths, rarely bad but frequently underweight and bland. Granted, it didn't help the production quality took a nose dive when they ditched Brian Eno, but I'd argue the bigger problem was a collapse in dynamic range - at their best, Coldplay could take their broad abstractions to soar, feel like so much more than was present explicitly in the text, but with every layer of stiff percussion and underweight electronics, I just got no emotional impact. 

And thus I was worried about Everyday Life, because at this point, Coldplay's pop pivot wasn't going to stop, especially given Max Martin cowriting with them. And yet while this album was being advertised as a double album, in reality each disc was pretty short so this project still clocked under an hour - thank god. But hey, rock bottom expectations, there's nowhere to go but up, right, so how is Everyday Life?

the top ten best hit songs of 2012 (REDUX) (VIDEO)

ABOUT FUCKING TIME I GET THIS DAMN THING OUT...

And now to get back on schedule. Lots to do, folks, stay tuned!

the top ten best hit songs of 2012 (REDUX)

So this top ten list is going to be a little different than the previous few I've put together - mostly because I've made it before.

So let's back up a little - as many of you know, I started on YouTube in July of 2013, but I had begun writing about music a good two years earlier, first on Facebook and in 2012 on my personal blog, where I started by assembling my list of the top ten best hit songs of 2012. And while I've made reference to that year on Billboard BREAKDOWN and in year-end lists, I've never actually converted that list to video, which is what I'm going to be doing today... with a twist. See, my opinions have evolved and changed over the past six years and I figured it wouldn't be a bad step to revisit the year-end Hot 100 of that year and see if my greater critical acumen and hindsight had shifted my opinion... and while for the most part it hasn't, I am going to making a few changes from that original list, so there's no guarantee you'll know what shows up here.

But if there is one thing that has been solidified by this relisten, it's that 2012 stands head-and-shoulders above the majority of this decade with some of the best hit songs of the 2010s. Pop was still riding out the club boom to a fair amount of success, country was only in the early years of the growth of bro-country and landed some real quality on the charts, R&B was notching some genuinely forward-thinking tunes, and hip-hop... okay, maybe more of a transitional year overall, but there were highlights. But what makes the 2012 chart so vibrant was the indie boom, a flashpoint of out-of-nowhere crossovers from indie folk, pop and rock that for a brief shining moment redefined what a hit could be in the mainstream. And while it's dispiriting how much of it would fizzle away in the coming year - and indeed, if we're looking at a theme for this list it would be high points of potential never quite achieved again - it still left us with a list of tracks where I actually had to cut some great songs, something you can't say about years like, say, 2016. So as always, the rules are that the song must debut on the year-end Hot 100 in this year, and let's get started with...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 11, 2017 (VIDEO)

Man, this was a week of surprises - half songs I didn't think I'd like as much as I do, half because there wasn't a single damn Future song that I liked (and believe me, I tried).

Eh, anyway, next up we have something I wanted to talk about that's a little on the weirder side, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 11, 2017

So I didn't have a good feeling about this week going in, mostly because I knew what was coming. I knew that we were getting the first half of Future's 'two albums in two weeks' mistake, and when you follow it with The Chainsmokers working with Coldplay, Linkin Park working with Kiiara, and Lana Del Rey, I was gearing up for a disaster... and that's before I found out about our biggest new arrival, but we'll get to that.

the top ten best hit songs of 2016 (VIDEO)

Well, this was certainly fun to make - genuinely curious if it ends up blowing up as much as it did last year, given how wonky this year was, so we'll see!

Next up, working on that big top 50 list, so stay tuned!

the top ten best hit songs of 2016

So for those of you who saw my last list, you might have caught my general assertion that 2016 was not good for the Hot 100. And here's the deeper truth: the bad songs, while there were more of them, they weren't the sort of atrocious that keeps you up at night, at least not as a whole. Despite how angry I got, I can think back to a few other years that had far more contemptible songs that would inspire a lot more rage - I think society as a whole has pretty much forgotten that in 2013 Rick Ross teamed up with Rocko and Future to release a song with a verse endorsing date rape - yeah, that was a thing.

No, the bigger problem with the year-end Hot 100 in 2016 is that there was a lot less good songs - we always get a lot of mediocrity but this was a year where the pickings were very slim. On the one hand, it makes this list pretty easy - very little to cut - but at the same time in stronger years, like 2012 or even 2015, I'm not sure how much of this list would have measured up. Many people made that same observation back in 2014 - I didn't, mostly because I genuinely found a lot to like about my list that year - but I'm not denying it for 2016, especially because the majority of songs that will make this list were originally released in 2015 and only became hits this year. If that's not the most glaring indictment on pop in 2016, I don't know what is, and what gets all the more infuriating is that the mediocrity clogging the arteries of this year kept otherwise great songs from catching on, especially in country music which despite big improvements even on the Hot 100 practically disappeared for the year end. 

But again, it had to land on that list, and it's a thin list indeed... but still, it wouldn't have made this list if I couldn't defend it being here, so let's start with our Honourable Mentions!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 20, 2016 (VIDEO)

Can't believe I almost forgot to post this.

So yeah, no review yesterday - splitting headaches will do that to you. And now with Kanye's new record... okay, I still want to get this Mute Gods review out (better late than never). Then Avantasia, Kanye, maybe this Charles Kelley record... although if I'm looking towards country, Wheeler Walker Jr. and Dori Freeman both look fun too. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 20, 2016

So like anyone who follows the pop charts, I've got a taste for the ironic, the sort of missed chances and opportunities that end up getting lodged in history because of how the charts put a timestamp on each moment. And this week, we got that irony twofold: not only did Drake bungle his release strategy to get a single to the #1 spot again, but now we have a new #1 smash hit from Zayn Malik, former member of One Direction - a feat that with all of their rabid fandom and push, they were never able to achieve.

video review: 'a head full of dreams' by coldplay

Well, given how well the last Coldplay review went, I can't imagine this one going better... but hey, you never know, right?

Next up, Troye Sivan as soon as the upload finishes - stay tuned!

album review: 'a head full of dreams' by coldplay

I don't know how to start this review.

Because let me give you a glimpse into my usual process when it comes to making these. The first bit tends to be written before I've given the album an in-depth listen, often providing some degree of analysis into my thoughts and research about the band before I start delving into the record in detail. And normally it's framed around some topic that I feel will correlate with the album I'm looking to explore, which can lead to some interesting shifts in perspective mid-review, but hey, it happens.

And thus when I sat down to work on this review, my plan was to start with a lengthy digression on what it means for an act to 'sell out' in today's day and age, because I get the impression that not a lot of people understand what it means. No, it's not just a genre shift towards pop - you can sell out while still making the same genre of music - but it's more focused on a band submitting to the songwriting machine to crank out hits. And hell, it's not even always a bad thing: sometimes 'selling out' provides the creative impetus to spark otherwise known skills in the artists in question. But the reason why it tends to be regarded by so many - especially critics of the older generation - as a bad thing is that it reflects a loss of artistic integrity and individuality. And for a critic who will listen to hundreds of records a year, those individual elements that stand out are worth all the more, something that might not be the case for more casual listeners. 

But what happens when you get a band like Coldplay, a band who has always played for populism in broad strokes and has enjoyed consistent mainstream success because of it? Would it be even possible for them to 'sell out', especially considering their newest album A Head Full Of Dreams was intended as the upbeat resolution to the downcast, minimalist, very much underwhelming electronics of Ghost Stories? And sure, they were working with Beyonce and Tove Lo and Stargate, but they were working with pop stars as early as Mylo Xyloto and with mainstream producers like Avicii last year - this isn't anything new. And yet when I checked out their lead-off single 'Adventure Of A Lifetime', I got the impression that despite more personal themes, the change in sound might be enough to fall into that sell out lane. What did become clear is that further investigation would be required - so what did we get with A Head Full Of Dreams?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 28, 2015 (VIDEO)

To quote one of my favourite comedy groups, we had some... well, we had some times. Yeah, that's it. Times.

But for real, thank you all for sticking around for the first year of this series! It was a lot of work, but I honestly think it was worth it. I've got some ideas how I might want to switch it up in the new year, but we'll see how things percolate out. Until then, I've got Bieber and a few country records, then I can finally dive into some of those black metal albums I've been dying to tackle, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 28, 2015

And now we're here - one year of Billboard BREAKDOWN is completed. Over the past fifty-plus episodes I've covered all the eccentricities of the Billboard Hot 100 charts, and it has been an eventful year! Between a switch in release scheduling, the chart-spanning weeks for artists too big to fail, and especially in the last quarter of this year the dominance of Canadian artists at the top that has tested my running thesis that the Canadian charts are always better. And I'll admit it's been a real learning experience for me too. Billboard BREAKDOWN has done a lot to define my channel, and though there have been many, many late nights where I swore up and down that after one year I'd be done with this, I'm going to leave that decision up to you. If you guys want me to continue with Billboard BREAKDOWN or revise the format at all, please let me know in the comments, I'm always grateful for your feedback and your support, especially as it's been the most consistent draw across my entire year.

video review: 'ghost stories' by coldplay

Man, this review was a struggle to write. It just inspired nothing in me whatsoever, and as a Coldplay fan, it's really disappointing.

Next up... honestly, not sure yet. We'll see.

album review: 'ghost stories' by coldplay

I think Coldplay has a worse reputation than they deserve.

Yes, they tend to get lumped into the category of silent majority acts, bands adored by the mainstream but generally viewed outside of the mainstream as making crowd-pleasing pablum, and yes, they've written more than their fair share of broadly sketched, saccharine trifle, and yes, Chris Martin can be a preening, pretentious dick, but when you take a step away from all of that, is Coldplay really all that bad?

Honestly, I don't think so. I'm not going to thrash a band for being accessible if they make good music along the way, and I'd be hard-pressed to deny that Coldplay has written some great melodies and decent lyrics throughout the course of their career. I think part of the issue with Coldplay is the undeserved hype behind them and I remember the push for the band as the next stadium rock act in the vein of U2. But while I can say Coldplay puts on a great show, having seen them live in 2009 when they toured with Snow Patrol, they're playing in a different wheelhouse than a band like U2, in instrumentation and especially in songwriting. 

But around the mid-to-late 2000s, things started to shift with Coldplay. They started working with Markus Dravs and Brian Eno when they released the slightly more experimental Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, which remains my favourite Coldplay album for amping up their epic scope into something with some actual teeth. They then tried for a concept album with Mylo Xyloto, and while I'm still not really a fan of that record, I do respect the band for sticking with Eno and trying something new. Granted, I couldn't take Chris Martin's bad pretentions behind asinine lyrics remotely seriously, and the autotune was completely unnecessary, I can't really call the album more than just a slight misfire for me.

But when I started hearing the first singles from Coldplay's newest album Ghost Stories, I was immediately worried. Not only did they seem softer and weaker than ever, they seemed to be opting for a drearier, ambient tone, the same sort that's been smothering indie rock like a plague for the past year. In other words, I had nothing but bad feeling about this album going into it: was I wrong?

the top ten best hit songs of 2012

I've got to be honest here - when I wrote about the worst songs of 2012, I couldn't write about them all in one sitting. And it wasn't just because it was long and I needed a break - it was more because I got some damn depressed trying to parse my way through the worst of 2012's pop music that I needed some kind of break - any kind of break - just to reinvigorate my spirits.

Fortunately for me, I don't think I'll have that much of a problem here, because today we're going to look at the best of 2012 - which, if I'm being completely honest, was a really great year for the pop charts. It's not hard to see why, particularly if you look at the year in context with 2011. I've written before on the twin axes of pop music (here, if you're curious), which are maturity and intelligence. And while material tends to travel up and down these 'axes' in parallel, the collapse of club music in 2011 showed the first sign of a divergence in the pop music scene: music that was mature and intelligent, and music that was immature and stupid. 

Now, let me make this absolutely clear: you can have great pop music that is both immature and stupid, but in general, you tend to see greater quality, innovation, and interesting breakthroughs with music that's smarter and more mature because the subject area is broader and the people crafting the music tend to be more insightful. And I'm not confining this to genre either: just because an act is country or crunk doesn't mean they don't have some wry intelligence, and just because an act is indie rock doesn't mean they're all that deep or insightful or mature.

And since I'm a fan of great pop music, I was thrilled to see this axis divergence, and even more thrilled to see a ton of great pop music spring up from the doldrums of the club music scene. And as much as I'd like to shout praise to the heavens for the indie rock explosion that saw plenty of extremely solid acts rocket to the top, I can't help but acknowledge that there were great country, hip-hop, rap, and even mainstream pop acts that surprised me with their quality.

But before I get in all that deep into the material from this year, let's quickly revisit my list of best hit songs from 2011:

10. 'Jar Of Hearts' by Christina Perri
9. 'Fucking Perfect' by Pink
8. 'Coming Home' by Diddy - Dirty Money ft. Skylar Grey
7. 'All Of The Lights' by Kanye West
6. 'The Show Goes On' by Lupe Fiasco
5. 'You And I' by Lady Gaga
4. 'Fuck You' by Cee Lo Green
3. 'Rolling In The Deep' by Adele
2. 'Someone Like You' by Adele
1. 'Colder Weather' by The Zac Brown Band

And, as usual, upon reflection, I'd probably make a few changes to this list:


10. 'Jar Of Hearts' by Christina Perri 'Stereo Hearts' by The Gym Class Heroes ft. Adam Levine
9. 'Fucking Perfect' by Pink 'Back To December' by Taylor Swift 
8. 'Coming Home' by Diddy - Dirty Money ft. Skylar Grey 'Blow' by Ke$ha
7. 'All Of The Lights' by Kanye West
6. 'The Show Goes On' by Lupe Fiasco
5. 'You And I' by Lady Gaga
4. 'Fuck You' by Cee Lo Green
3. 'Rolling In The Deep' by Adele
2. 'Someone Like You' by Adele
1. 'Colder Weather' by The Zac Brown Band

Huh, not that many changes, really. Part of that is an indictment on how great all of these songs are, but part of it is also the fact that all of these songs represented the best of their genres and the best of growing trends on the charts. 

And if I'm being completely blunt, I don't know what part of my mind thought it was a good idea to put both 'Jar Of Hearts' (a song I've really soured on in recent months) and 'Fucking Perfect' (which has worn out a fair bit of its welcome) on the list, and it wasn't hard to swap them out for 'Stereo Hearts' (a song that grew on me due to some clever metaphors and an incredibly catchy chorus courtesy of Adam Levine at his best) and 'Blow' (a song that has problems, to be sure, but builds surprisingly well and is punchy enough to be a damn great dance/work-out track). And really, 'Coming Home' isn't a bad track in the slightest, but 'Back To December' is really so much better, and probably Taylor Swift's best song by far.

And with that, let's proceed to 2012, and some Honourable Mentions:

album review: 'the flaming lips and heady fwends' by the flaming lips

Short version: it's incredibly weird and the mix of the psychedelic and avant-garde will throw some people off, but in terms of beautifully coherent and powerful art, you're not going to find a better album this year. Highly recommended.

Have you ever contemplated the end of the world?

It may seem like a vague, strange, almost-silly question, drenched in unfortunate implications and terrible pop culture (particularly in this year), but it's something that's fascinated the thinkers, great and small, throughout time. Everyone wonders what the end of the world would be like, what will happen to this tiny planet suspended in the galactic cosmos. Less often is the question of what one would do at the end of the world, and outside of Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World, a Steve Carrell/Keira Knightley movie that's currently one of my most anticipated movies of the summer, most people don't have good answers to the question. Why?

Well, perhaps because the question is loaded, because you're not only forced to contemplate your death in the question, but the chance that everything around you, everything you've ever cherished and loved, will be gone with you. No memories left behind, no fond recollections, no legacy, no... nothing. It was what Melancholia tried (and arguably failed) to capture - the possibility that everything you've ever done will amount to precisely nothing as everything you define as existence collapses and vanishes around you - ultimately, what does everything mean then?

The closest I've ever heard to capturing this vision was the prog/space metal epic from Ayreon 01011001, but that album's themes were more linked to the greater questions of human existence and the significance of life, lacking the necessary focus to truly contemplate this question in any significant detail. I'd also argue the album, while very strong, didn't quite nail down the necessary emotions to truly encapsulate what makes this question so significant. That album, loaded with bombast and intensity, didn't quite capture the little emotions, the quiet thoughts that were necessary to make the question truly resonate. Because, like it or not, not all of us have the courage or force of will to stare straight into the apocalypse with open arms.

The Flaming Lips have the courage, and with their newest album, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends, they probably do the most thorough and deep exploration of the question that I've ever heard, with collaborators on every track to lend additional facets to the digression.

And it's glorious.