My Top 100 Albums: #98 - Coldplay, ‘Ghost Stories’
98.
Coldplay, ‘Ghost Stories’
Parlophone, 2014
By 2014, Coldplay had already released five studio albums and had established themselves enough in the musical zeitgeist to experiment with their sound and diversify their output. A long way from their origins in light, folk-inspired alternative rock, successive releases Viva La Vida and Mylo Xyloto had seen the band foray into art pop, stadium rock and electronica to great commercial success, but at some expense (at least in the eyes of some critics) to their credibility. Ghost Stories was, then, a bit of a non-sequitur. Criminally under-represented in the commercial sphere, it saw the band really attempt to manage all of their various influences and also create something genuinely meaningful. Although it was not public knowledge at the time, the band’s main creative force Chris Martin was undergoing a breakup with his long time partner Gwyneth Paltrow, and Ghost Stories became an outlet for the gamut of emotion that the situation provoked. Perhaps this prompted Martin to seek a return to his roots, as the album features a lot of the sort of sound that the band broke through with in the early 2000s, but never in a way that feels stale or derivative. Rather, with the help of electronic acolyte Jon Hopkins, they created something that still feels unique, not only within the context of their own discography, but also in the era in which the album was released. The record’s laid-back and introspective nature has resulted in it being somewhat overlooked in the context of one of the most financially-successful bands of the current generation, but don’t make the mistake of underestimating the power of the music in this album. From the rhythmically-captivating lead single Magic to the pumping bassline of A Sky Full of Stars, this album for me represents a dramatic departure for the band which, when viewing the band’s career as a whole, provides an important bridge between their earlier work and the more mainstream dance pop tracks that they would become famous for in the later 2010s. A hidden highlight from this album in my opinion is the track True Love, a beautiful ode to love that perfectly represents the dichotomy of loving someone but having to leave them at the same time -consider the song’s hook: “Tell me you love me/If you don’t then lie to me.” Indeed, for me this album features some of Martin’s best lyrics, alongside some of the band’s more minimalistic, and yet more potent, instrumentals. A must-listen for Coldplay fans, but also different enough from the band’s wider catalogue to merit a listen from those who generally avoid them.
Hidden Highlight: True Love
Always in My Head
Magic
Ink
True Love
Midnight
Another’s Arms
Oceans
A Sky Full of Stars
O