Title: X & Y
Artist: Coldplay
Coldplay’s latest, X & Y, searches for relationships that last and maybe more, but the blend of soulful insights and melodic rhythms are worth inspecting further. The album begins with “Square One,” as good a place as any to start. Chris Martin sings, “you’re in control, is there anywhere you want to go?” but quickly turns to “You just want somebody listening to what you say, it doesn’t matter who you are.” Here lies the dichotomy that Coldplay explores the whole way through: we make the decisions about our lives that have the greatest impact but we cannot survive in isolation—we need others.
Review by
JACOB SAHMS
Coldplay’s latest, X & Y, searches for relationships that last and maybe more, but the blend of soulful insights and melodic rhythms are worth inspecting further. The album begins with “Square One,” as good a place as any to start. Chris Martin sings, “you’re in control, is there anywhere you want to go?” but quickly turns to “You just want somebody listening to what you say, it doesn’t matter who you are.” Here lies the dichotomy that Coldplay explores the whole way through: we make the decisions about our lives that have the greatest impact but we cannot survive in isolation—we need others.
Questions abound in “What if,” as the band desires the right words to say to make the relationship complete but lacks the surety to know that they’ll get it right. “White shadows” reflects back on childhood, as Martin sings that he used to be able to see the white shadows but the noise now gets in the way. “You’re part of the human race/All the stars and the outer space/Part of the system,” sings Martin, but that isn’t a glorified place, it’s one lost in a sea of faces, lacking individualism. The band wants to be able to hear and see the way it did in childhood, to know how to relate to others, but taking it a step further, to be able to believe what they once did before the ‘noise’ (skepticism, doubt?) drove away their belief.
The ‘voice’ of “Fix you” could be a human relating to another or could be God. The singer invites the listeners to come to safety when they’ve tried and failed, when they get what they want but not what they need, lose something that they can’t replace, etc. The ‘fixing’ in “Talk” is about communicating and the invitation comes from one who lacks the right words, but still wants to exchange thoughts and feelings with another. The brokenness drives the singer to dive into the ‘deep end’ in “X&Y,” where the other becomes his best friend, with complications: “I wanna love you but I don’t know if I can.” Is the other, God? We lack the words to communicate, to embrace what He says but we still desire Him. The whole that needs filled by God is too big for anything else—but like Coldplay, all of us lack the words to express our feelings toward Him and others.
“Speed of sound” embraces wide-eyed wonder: “Ideas that you’ll never find/Or the inventors could never design…The sign that I couldn’t read/Or the light that I couldn’t see/Some things you have to believe/But others are puzzles, puzzles to me.” How do the things we can’t understand get in the way of what we believe and drive us to further inspiration? Maybe the answer is that we can’t handle it all, so God gives the knowledge of what we can know, but the desires to expand and know more. Our wonder leads us closer to Him, because He provides us the option, and we choose to pursue Him.
Coldplay does know that it has “A message”: “My song is love/Love to the loveless.” Regardless of whether the love will be received or not, Martin won’t take back his profession of love because he’s “got to get that message home.” God’s message is love, through the death and resurrection of His one and only son, to people who wouldn’t know love otherwise. These others are represented in “Low,” where the recipient of the message still sees the world in black and white but lacks purpose. Martin sings that the opportunity is there for love to replace death but the other has to accept and receive it. That love could replace death appears possible at the end of time in “Til Kingdom Come,” as Martin promises to wait forever for love. We have assurance of that eternity in the sacrifice of God and it seems that love is something Coldplay would wait out eternity to receive.
Finally, “Swallowed in the sea” and “Crest of waves” struggle with a metaphysical understanding of being lost in the ocean versus secure on dry land. In the first, Martin sings questions what good it is to live “with nothing left to give/Forget but not forgive, not loving all you see.” In the second, he sings that he could be lost or saved, the outcome is still in doubt but that “nothing matters/except life and the love you make.” Coldplay doesn’t have the answers for how the outcome will play out but they’ve settled on love as the answer. There are no easy solutions for the problems we find ourselves in but with love as a guide, we’ll find our way.
