Music of the Spheres — onLife²
Coldplay reminds us that we are all aliens somewhere
Coldplay’s last album, Everyday Life, was announced at a time in 2019 when I was living everything but my everyday life. I had just arrived in Japan for the first time and listened to Arabesque on the train between Narita Airport and Tokyo.
Today, after a pandemic, not that it was then what it is today, or that today it has come to an end, Coldplay are back to make us travel, literally.
Yellow was one of their first songs that I listened to and even then it was evident the desire they had to confront, and not just reflect, that glimmering light emanating from the stars.
But what the human-minded being knows is that no matter how intrinsically stars it may bark at it, it is the planets that orbit around it its destination.
Not surprisingly, even if the goal would be to get us back to the moon by the middle of the next decade, Coldplay manage to land in another galaxy today, in 2021.
I have always seen as an immeasurable necessary value, the fact that an album really is, not as a disconnected set of single songs, but a single path to be listened continuously: a journey.
Coldplay started to bewitch me years ago for this reason too.
Music of the Spheres, on the other hand, is perhaps one of the albums in which the songs are less linked to each other, at least for the sounds.
Of course, as usual, those dreams interludes return, upon which one might almost wish to have a whole song built, and which links one part of the solar system to the other.
But in this case, the melodic differences of the various pieces represent their origin from different planets. A perhaps necessary inconsistency, who would think that music is made on Earth in the same way as Mars?
The exceptional creative direction of this album, in fact, revolves around the twelve celestial bodies, Neon Moon I, Kaotica, Echo, Kubik, Calypso, Supersolis, Ultra, Floris, Neon Moon II, Epiphane, Infinity Station, and Coloratura, of the planetary system The Spheres.
An obsessive attention has been paid to each of them, from planetary design to the invention of twelve alphabets, with their respective phonemes.
All these are added values of a creative work that goes far beyond the melody.
Thanks to Pilar Zeta, an exceptional Argentine artist.
Having said that, what I would like to try to do briefly in this article is to re-propose a format stolen by YouTube.
A reaction, but through the literary medium. It’s a test, who knows it might work.
1. Intro
⦵ (1/12)
Even before listening to this intro, there is something to say, what name would this be? Very simple, even if the song has this symbol as its official name, the title is Music of the Spheres.
Interestingly, Coldplay wanted to request this path, even if it is not exactly a novelty, the emoji, in this case symbolic probably for a fact of compatibility, are in the process of being accepted in written language for some time.
Typical introduction, it reminds me a bit of A Head Full of Dreams.
I have already mentioned it before and I repeat it. Sometimes I would like these extemporaneous sounds, which are not part of any song, to become melody in their own right. When I went from listening to Coldplay only on the radio, without having Shazam yet and therefore knowing how to listen to them again, to having iTunes in my hands, they will be what struck me most.
Together with the fact that the tracks on the same album were often linked by an evolving melody.
⦵, how much expectation you give me.
Higher Power (2/12)
First real song on the album, as well as the first single released.
While every time something new comes out it is naturally a party, surely this is one of the most commercial tracks ever.
Not that it’s a bad thing, the melody works, it gives you a certain frenzy, a lot of good energy. But at the same time it is definitely not what makes me fall in love, so to speak what I am looking for is closer to High Speed than to Higher Power.
But it is probably the right jolt to give along with the announcement of a new album.
“Coldplay are back, wow, can’t wait to hear the songs that will never be on the radio.” More or less it sounds like this to me.
Humankind (3/12)
Another electric shock, but this time steeped in that rock that reminds me of old albums. Much better for my taste.
The text then begins to speak to me, much more than that of Higher Power.
It will be that in every moment of our life we tend to notice more those negative events, triggered directly by us. In show society, we all become our bitterest paparazzi, ready to find some misstep.
Humankind allows us to remind ourselves that we are only human, fallible, sometimes from the same planet, and sometimes not.
The rhetoric of equality with time will be outdated, it will no longer be necessary to remind us that
We’re only human
But from another planet
Still, they call us humankind
and finally we will realize how cool it is to be different.
2. Refrain
*✧ (4/12)
The first interlude of the album, this is where the middle section begins.
An asterisk and a star, codenamed Alien Choir.
There is little to say, except to repeat what I have already written for ⦵.
Let Somebody Go (5/12)
It’s probably the first time I’ve heard Selena Gomez’s voice, it amazed me.
This song seems a bit taken from Ghost Stories, imbued with that sweet melancholy, which would be curious to find out where it comes from.
There’s a little bit of Yellow, a little bit of The Scientist.
Even Chris Martin does not fail to emphasize that it is “really just a lovable ballad”, with the typical text that makes my cynicism collide with my desire to dream.
Perfect for broken hearts, who could never blame them by being told
When I called the mathematicians and
I asked them to explain
They said love is only equal to the pain
Having to choose on the radio I would play this one, rather than Higher Power.
♡ (6/12)
Coldplay had already tried gospel in BrokEn, a couple of years ago, with fabulous results. In ♡,Human Heart for the friends, they return to this genre, but in a more modern and intimate guise.
I would not be surprised if something like this resounded from the churches of Harlem, in about fifty years, and I would absolutely not mind returning to visit it to hear how that song has evolved.
My first feeling when hearing this song is that it is a hymn to fragility, performed with that delicacy of someone who really wants to reach those he sings about.
We Are King and Jacob Collier make everything perfect.
People of the Pride (7/12)
This is the song that made me most exalted.
You don’t expect it, it comes after an almost whispered song, and screams out loud
We’ll all be free to fall in love
With who we want and say
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
People of the pride
Rock.
Adrenaline and a certain desire to see that future in which there will be no discrimination, but we will all be People of the Pride.
This is a living hope and it must be sung, shouted, invoked, until the voice is gone.
At that point we will only have to start this song, now that we finally have it.
Biutyful (8/12)
I find it really hard not to smile listening to this song.
I don’t know for what reason, but every now and then the right configuration of voices and sounds annihilates all the logic I would like to be the bearer of.
But what it is escapes me, which is why it is difficult for me to say why it is so catchy and persuasive. I almost doubt that there is actually a reason.
Sure the discrepancy with the previous song plays its part, Chris Martin takes care of the rest. All without knowing whose alien voice duets with him is.
Mystery.
3. Outro
❍ (9/12)
Here we summarize all the message of the album.
Rebmemer, erehwrmos nelia na si enoyrevE
Everyone is an alien somewhere.
My Universe (10/12)
BTS.
Chris Martin says that this song was born from the rumors that have circulated on Twitter in recent years.
But this song is the perfect expedient to tell why, even where Coldplay’s sounds and intentions are more commercial, it’s really hard to find a song of theirs that I don’t like.
My Universe contains the possibility of making a global success, taking advantage of the opportunity to create a mixture that maybe we needed, maybe not.
In addition to the song, however, to fully enjoy the union of these two groups, you should watch the documentary video that tells of the two days in which Chris Martin, in the midst of a pandemic, left to go to Korea to record with BTS .
Perhaps the beauty of all this is more the journey, conceptual and otherwise.
Thanks to them we all experience a little bit of that pleasure of hearing catchy but incomprehensible words without knowing Korean, as happens for those who do not know English and listen to Coldplay.
Nice.
∞ (11/12)
A minimum of disorientation listening to the beginning of this, so to speak, stadium anthem.
On the other hand, we are on a different planet than the one from which the notes of the last song came.
Slowly, however, it takes you, cradles you, and makes you want to continue the hola that has begun.
It is ethereal, but at the same time it makes you feel all those around you who are seeing that vision that has unfolded in front of you.
It is concrete, but it lifts you into a whirlwind of feelings, which you may have wanted to hide from yourself, but after what follows it will no longer be possible.
Coloratura (12/12)
It is absurd how the end of one journey corresponds to the beginning of another.
You arrive at Coloratura thinking you are almost at home, instead you have simply arrived at the furthest point from it.
Upstream, anti-radio, surprising.
Some say it remembers Pink Floyd, someone takes it off hearing it.
Actually, there are Coldplay to remind us that you can do a 10-minute song without letting you hear it in the slightest.
Making the singularity a perfectly linked plurality, inducing us to amalgamate with it. We are finally everywhere.
The best that will remain of this album.
