Review of X&Y

In recent years few artists have been able to gather the success that bands like U2, Aerosmith, and the Eagles were able to achieve. One group that has begun to challenge this notion is Coldplay. Coldplay released their first album in 2000 and found an even larger amount of success from their second release, A Rush of Blood to the Head, in 2002, leading to a much anticipated release of their third album, X&Y. With this release in 2005, Coldplay showed that they were a band able to produce great things. X&Y has influences from their first two CD’s yet is new material and seems to show signs of a new style. The album uses their signature heavy piano and adds more guitar and rock into their modern brit/pop music. The lead singer Chris Martin also uses simple lyrics to create stories of emotion and relationships that allow everybody to connect to his music.

Coldplay is hard to put into one exact genre of music, but many consider their music to be alternative. They use a large amount of piano backed up with the strumming of a guitar and the beat and drive of a bass and drums. In this recent release, Coldplay has slightly moved away from their signature sound, increasing the amount of guitar and dimming down the piano. They have created more of a rock influenced alternative album, which shows that Coldplay is trying to create unique music, along with staying true to the roots that got them started. Coldplay’s album X&Y does not rely on pounding riffs that repeat over and over but rather creates smooth, yet intense music that seems to be filled with emotion and meaning. Many of the songs portray aspects of relationships and love and tackle them in way that challenges both the mind and soul, using great lyrics along with smooth ballad like music.

The album starts off with a song titled “Square One”, showing their new sound with a song that is full of guitar, bass and drums, with no piano. Following “Square One” is “What If”, which in the beginning reverts back to that traditional style of Coldplay, yet soon switches to this new style. Soon after “What If” comes another great song titled “Fix You”. “Fix You” is a combination of great musical ability and good lyrical choices. The song starts off quietly with just the organ and Chris Martin singing and it then slowly builds its way up, adding more anticipation and more instruments until it reaches that single point when everything comes to gather as if the climax in a story. The song ends the same as it started with just vocals and some piano in a soft tone. X&Y also holds another great song that brought a lot of hype on the album before being released. “Speed of Sound,” the first single off the album, is a loud rock influenced song with that piano twist. The song includes good vocals, good lyrics, including the catchy chorus “…earth’s gone flying at the speed of sound…,” along with great instrumentation.

The CD is full of both loud and soft songs that are all wonderfully unique on their own but when played together seem to complete a story. The album includes a great culmination of vocals and instrumentals to create powerful and intense songs that leaves listeners wanting more, along with lyrics that many people can relate to. The lyrics of many of the songs seem to talk about relationships and emotions of Chris Martin, but they also allow people to relate and connect to them because everybody experiences these things. Some of these things can be shown in the hits like the ones mentioned above and also more such as in “Talk” and “White Shadows”.

X&Y is a CD that easily represents some of the best alternative music out there. While many people believe that it did not live up to the hype it received before it was released, it is a solid album with many different musical styles. It is a bands effort to show that they can produce quality music with their own sense of style. The album is very good, from the guitar solos to the moderate amounts of piano. The album has stepped away from their previous sound that was filled with piano and great accompaniment to a new modern sound that brings out the guitar, bass and drums. This is displayed right from the beginning of X&Y. Much of the album seems to fuse rock and roll into their alternative music, still with the bases of what they became famous for. In their new release they seem to take very few risks at creating something genuinely new but rely on what they had going for them and created a strong and powerful album that shows the strengths that they have. This group of four put together a solid album featuring many good hits that will help to bring this band in competition with the superstars such as U2. (How so?)