I can understand a lot of the criticism of Coldplay. However, I really like Parachutes. I really like this album and I really think Viva La Vida is their best work. The rest of their catalog is either retreads of the first two albums (X&Y, Ghost Stories) or weird experiments in pop that never quite work out (all the albums with weird names).
There is for sure a formula that was written here but I don’t think it was formulaic until X&Y.
I think
@TenderLovingKiller® is on to it with their wanting to be U2 but I think that is evident with Parachutes as well. Parachutes is jangly indie pop not completely unlike War - except built in a post Radiohead world instead of in a merely post Punk world. This is the bombastic approach of Joshua Tree.
Reading the entry in the book and learning that A Whisper and Clocks were composed at the request of outside folks, I get some of the accusations of them being baked in a lab I’ve seen/heard through the years (although this is rich following YHF - an example of the record label and execs fucking up hard core in their taste making audacity - that being said this album is multiplatinum compared to YHF’s mere gold status. I’m also positive this success correlates to the relative disdain for the band in the music intelligentsia.)
It being released a few months after YHF and a few months ahead of the first anniversary of 9/11, I’m sure the radio friendly melancholy had a lot to do with its success.
I wasn’t fully aware of Coldplay until a few years after all this. Viva was the first time I was aware of them during the album cycle. I was astounded at knowing all of this album by the time I picked it up. (It would be several years later before I picked up Parachutes).
As a side note, I wonder, for me, how much being into Coldplay during that Rush to Viva period had to do with me receiving Radiohead better. I did not like Pablo Honey upon release and still have a complicated relationship with that album. My brother was an avid Radiohead fan from go… so I was more than aware of their music as their career progressed but it wasn’t for me.. I didn’t board that train until Hail to the Thief. That one connected with me and I very quickly acquired their entire discography and have been a fan since but not to the lengths of some of the cats around these parts.