Songs like album opener “Always In My Head” give us a hint of the new direction Coldplay is exploring here: a more intimate, stripped back approach contrasted against the more bombastic, anthemic notes of their previous release, Mylo Xyloto (2011).
So with this band mentality at work, Ghost Stories plays as honest and raw, lamenting and longing, reflective and ultimately hopeful. But we’re dealing with Coldplay as an entity and a band who has built a reputation on being (occasionally annoyingly) optimistic. Perhaps if this had been a solo album, it could have easily steered towards the overly melancholy. As with any album focused on loss, an artist treads a very fine line with the listener between being self-indulgent in his moping or being purely surface level with their authenticity.
Or as Martin himself would later put it in a conversation with Zane Lowe, Ghost Stories is a journey of “unconditional love” that asks, “how do you let the things that happen to you in the past-your ghosts-how do you let them affect your present and your future?”Ĭareful not to label this a “break-up” album (which at its broken, fractured heart it is), the band present a collection of songs dealing with the private feelings of a very public breakup.
More cathartic than commercially aimed, the material he was writing at the time, along with bandmates Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman and Will Champion, was an exploration of love, loss and lament. A safe place to explore the whirlwind of emotions he was going through. And who could blame him? With five albums and seemingly endless touring behind Coldplay, hiding away could have been a welcome respite from the pressure to do something, play something, say something.īut rather than retreat, Martin found solace in the comfort of melody and rhythms. So when, in 2014, Chris and Gwyneth Paltrow, his wife of over ten years, announced their “conscious uncoupling,” many expected him to retreat a little from the limelight.
Happy 5th Anniversary to Coldplay’s sixth studio album Ghost Stories, originally released May 16, 2014.įor a lyricist and musician such as Chris Martin, who has always worn his heart on his sleeve notes, a dramatic change in your personal life will always find its way into your art.
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