After having conquered the whole world, Coldplay clearly intends to reach the moon with their tenth studio album, Moon Musicwhich appears Friday October 4. Excess does not scare the group formed in London in 1997 by Chris Martin (vocals, piano), Jonny Buckland (guitar, keyboards), Guy Berryman (bass) and Will Champion (drums), and has become above all an enormous machine whose the numbers are dizzying.
Read the review (in 2022): Article reserved for our subscribers Coldplay breaks records at the Stade de France
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More than nine million tickets have already been sold during the “Music of the Spheres” world tour, launched in March 2022, spent, moreover, at the Stade de France for four evenings, and which will end in September 2025. It will then be the highest-grossing tour of all time, even dethroning Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour”. To ease the ecological conscience of Chris Martin and his band, the energy of the concerts is 100% renewable (solar and kinetic).
Even if the authors of the hits Yellow or The Scientist claim to have reduced their carbon footprint by almost 60% compared to their previous tour, the approach, as laudable as it may be, raises other questions. What about the emissions generated by spectators’ air travel to concert venues? The reforestation campaign which plans to plant seven million trees thanks to tickets sold, in order to offset the emissions of the tour, fuels criticism with greenwashing, while the group continues to travel by plane from one city to another .
Read the decryption (in 2019): Coldplay postpones its tour so as not to pollute the planet
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In this context fraught with climate issues, Coldplay’s music almost seems to take second place. Their tenth studio album, Moon Musicpresents itself as the second part of “Music of the Spheres”, released in 2021. No fewer than six producers are credited, including Swedish pop mogul Max Martin (Taylor Swift, The Weeknd), already at work previously.
Unifying escalation
For the overall tone, we look at the variegated synth-pop developed since Mylo Xyloto (2011), although with an increased presence of string arrangements on practically all the titles. Obviously, Coldplay no longer fits into the rock box, their last “guitar” oriented album being Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends in 2008. To now satisfy his ambition for interplanetary pop, Chris Martin prefers to use an arsenal of keyboards and choruses designed for arenas, a formula profitably deployed on the hits Paradise et A Sky Full of Stars.
The first single, Feelslikeimfallinginlovetended to reassure early fans, with a sunny and candid refrain as desired. But the English quickly fall back into their unifying electro-pop escalation advocating, with more or less taste, the mixing of cultures.
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