Coldplay has always felt like a band full of squandered potential with hopelessly romantic drivel that targets the suburban 40-year old white woman demographic and it’s unfortunate that they continue to lean into this sound. Earlier in their career at least, they experimented with different ideas, and Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends remains their most impressive work that showcases their actual potential in an engaging way. Nevertheless, the tides of time have not been kind to Coldplay and they’ve more or less ended up like Maroon 5 after nuking any semblance of decent songwriting in their albums. Music of the Spheres isn’t really the final nail in the coffin so much as another reminder that Coldplay has long destroyed the remnants of any artistic originality in their music. You would think that their uninspired love ballads would be enough to rock the Billboard Top 100 for years to come but as evidenced by 2019’s utterly forgettable Everyday Life, even that formula doesn’t sound universally boring enough to make money. So on Music of the Spheres, Coldplay take their empty platitudes and banal songwriting to a whole new level of desperation with glossy mainstream anthems that will undoubtedly haunt the nightmares of retail workers for years to come.
There is no creative process behind any of the songs beyond cobbling together some pop-centric chords with corny lyrics about optimism and love. I’m not even kidding, half of the songs on Music of the Spheres are literally named with emojis and that pretty much sums up the amount of effort put into this album. There’s supposedly a thematic element behind the album based on Star Wars which is exactly the kind of pointless, faux-deep aesthetic that Chris Martin likes to use. Regardless, the interstellar concept never materializes as anything interesting: it seems infinitely more plausible that it functions exclusively to generate more money from the launch events and rollout with the augmented reality photobooths and “alien” language messages. I suppose you could say there are some spacey sounds found throughout the songs but a cursory listen of the Billboard bait like “My Universe” with BTS or “Let Somebody Go” with Selena Gomez immediately shows that it’s nothing more than a gimmick. The multitracked vocals, repetitive synths, purposeful crescendos in bridges, and marching drums on the songs feel like Coldplay just throwing things together until they stick.
On songs like “People of the Pride”, you can hear an impressive orchestral section of strings and muffled vocals that sound like a Star Wars intro before it evaporates into a Queens of the Stone Age ripoff complete with heavy riffs and electronica elements. “My Universe” at least has a catchy hook but even BTS can’t save the song from being an inevitable mess that overstays its welcome. Every song gets about 20 seconds to shine before Coldplay shamelessly transforms it into another overblown attempt at a chart-topper. There’s not a single redeeming song on here that gives any glimpse into whatever talent Coldplay had twenty years ago. Maybe it gets a few points for its catchy stadium hooks but let’s not pretend that there’s anything beyond its superficial depth. What’s worse is that Chris Martin has always been a terrible songwriter that has no idea how to express himself and that has only gotten worse with each passing album divebombing in quality. Years ago, Coldplay would’ve been the first to admit that they’re not good lyricists or musicians but they were at least authentic in how dorky and optimistic they were. On Music of the Spheres, there’s not even a trace of that left as they hastily slam together sounds in an attempt to regain their footing on the charts and in the hearts of soccer moms with SUVs everywhere.
