Coldplay Surprises with New Concept Album Music of the Spheres

4.5 out of 5 stars

Well, I have to say that I was pretty shocked to see that Coldplay put together a concept album of ANY kind let alone some sort of space rock anthology such as they did for Music of the Spheres. 

Lead singer Chris Martin says the album was inspired by the Mos Eisley cantina scene in Star Wars which led him to pose the question, “What does music sound like across the universe?” (to paraphrase).

So, color me shocked when I didn’t absolutely hate this album and found MANY redeeming factors within it. 

Most notably, the song “Coloratura” which is a 10-minute song that harkens a lot of Pink Floyd sounds. I would almost go out on a limb and say this is one of the top 5 songs Coldplay has ever created. It is by far the best song on the album, and one of the best songs of the year.

Now, on the flip side, there are a couple of songs I could do without on the album, but in reality, the point of the album is to be totally varied and have sounds from all over melding together in a universal experience. So, while I do think that is almost a cop-out to allow yourself to just make music of different genres, somehow it is actually cohesive on this album, in my opinion.

Do I think that this album is better than the early Coldplay albums like Parachutes and Rush of Blood to the Head? Definitely not. But I am actually reasonably happy that this album wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be from having heard the lead single “Higher Power.”

Also, I am not much of a fan of the BTS collaboration song “My Universe” but I don’t totally hate it either.

There’s some weird thing about this album that makes me want to dislike it, but it makes enough good stuff to actually like it.

One of the more surprising songs to me was actually “People of the Pride” where towards the latter part of the song it gets really heavy and becomes almost a hard rock song. Something I have never heard from Coldplay before.

Also, the (Human Heart) song symbolized by a heart symbol is a pretty cool sounding chorus of darker, chant-like singing that has the ability to captivate you for moments.

Now, the overall lyrical concepts in the songs aren’t deep and meaningful by any means. They are not personal in anyway...well, for the most part. I do believe that a couple of songs are really personal like “Let Somebody Go” and “Biutyful” (which is about my least favorite song on the album but still not unlistenable).

The rest of the lyrics are pretty generic pop songs - “Coloratura” being an exception as that song seems to just say, “We are making this song about whatever we want and however we want.” It also has a religious undertone where Coloratura seems to be (or reference) a heaven-like destination. So, it is one of the more nuanced pieces of subject matter on the album for sure.

All in all, I will say that I was pleasantly surprised that I liked this album overall. I know a lot of people will hate it just because it is something so different, and I totally understand that. However, I had to let this album sit for a few days before I did a review on it, because I was at first thoroughly confused, then annoyed, but what followed next was an overall feeling of, “I actually get what’s going on, and it’s not so bad.”

Make your own judgment though. Go check out the album now.