Coldplay – A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002)

I was introduced to Coldplay earlier in the same year as this album came out by my back then girlfriend. Coldplay's first album had already been quite successful in UK, but it was really this second album that made them famous in Finland. So, when I first started listening to Coldplay, they were this small indie band from UK. I liked the first albums dreamy acoustic folk sound and when this second album came out I was fairly excited about it. I even liked this album quite a lot. The sound was a lot bigger and more produced than on the first album, but there was similar kind of melancholic mood to this album. Now of course, Coldplay is known throughout the world and they keep making albums each one worse than their predecessor. I've long since lost track of the band, because they lost everything that was even slightly good about them. This has made the band a bit embarrassing.



Now that I'm listening to this album I can easily understand why I liked the band back in the day so much. The melodies are quite melancholic and the guitars sound as they were supposed to sound like back in the early 00's. There are even couple of songs on this album that I still quite like even if most of the album sounds way too cheesy nowadays. Especially the hit songs In My Place and The Scientist sound so outdated and so cheesy that I can't really appreciate them anymore. I remember The Scientist playing on the background in Cold Feet television series back in the day and me being really emotional for it. Those days are definitely over.

Instead, I now like songs that I didn't think that much back then. The opening song Politik is probably my favourite song on the album nowadays. It has this great melancholic and dark melody and especially the last bit with massive pianos and drumming works really well even now. Also the folky Green Eyes is quite good in all its simplicity. Back in the day I used to really like A Rush of Blood to the Head and Amsterdam and they are still fairly okay, but not like they used to be.

Back then in 2002 I was in fact such a fan of the band that I travelled with my friends to Stockholm to see them live. They were already quite massive back then, so the gig was in a local hockey arena. I was impressed by the lightship because at the time I mainly just attended gigs on small clubs. That was probably the last time it made any sense to see Coldplay live, so I'm glad that I did that back then.

Coldplay's music videos played on television quite frequently back in the day. I'm quite sick of them now because they were played all the time so I'll just link the mostly live footage music video of Clocks here. It kind of shows how their live shows used to be back in the day.

It's probably clear from this blog text that I don't really listen to Coldplay anymore, but I do own this CD and it brings lots of memories with it. It's a shame that band whose first album was so promising turned so bad so quickly.

Listen to the album on Spotify.