Coloratura is eternity in colors
It’s no secret I’m a big Coldplay fan. I’ve been talking about the band constantly. Viva La Vida is the perfect album, Everyday life is a great ending song, A rush of blood… is legendary and so it goes. Recently I’ve written some reviews on the eight albums the band put out over twenty years and ranked them. And I said, I would be waiting to see what Higher Power would bring to the table once the album was announced. It was. Music of the Spheres, the next Coldplay album, will be out by October 15, and as of now, we have a teaser, containing seconds of each song, a tracklisting I’ll list at the end, and a second single: the mind-blowingly-anthemic-rhapsody Coloratura.
Coloratura is maybe the greatest Coldplay masterpiece to date. It combines the best of Coldplay’s writing, Martin’s singing talents, melodic guittars, ninety’s inspired bass lines, mid-tempo drums, and is both an intimate-tune and stadium-extravaganza, altogether. The 10-minute space epic takes the listener into a panoramic, multi-suite voyage into the cosmos. The orchestral-driven song about eternity and love and colors and exploration and human life. The lyrics and pieces within the song, which are built like an opera rock, big band style, incapsulates humanity’s drive to reach the stars and heaven, embodying the best from Coldplay’s twenty-five years of experiences. It feels old-school Coldplay as much as it feels like it belongs to some overrated stadium world tour at the same time. And those are the qualities we’re supposed to get from the new album, that, from the previews, might sound better than the last two put together. That’s my cue to talk about the setlist.
Produced by Max Martin, known for his outstanding with Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Celine Dion, Taylor Swift, and more recently Ariana Grande, the album will feature twelve tracks, including allegedly three or four interludes.
Higher Power is supposed to be the first singing song in the album, as Coloratura is closing it. In between, we have little to no information whatsoever about the songs.
So, based on the previews, what to expect? Let’s see what we can come up with.
Humankind will be some sort of Birds apparently, one of those old Coldplay second songs that feel like “In My Place” and features some stylized acoustic guitar and 80’s pad. Let somebody go will follow as the first ballad in the project. What seems to be People of the pride might be the song I’m most excited about, some alt-rock uptempo British-like tune that gives me the chills in the trailer. Biutyful sounds like it came out of some “A head full of dreams” session. My Universe sounds synth-pop and I already love it. Infinity sign might be an interlude and either way, sounds like some of the last songs from “Mylo Xyloto”. Other interludes might include Human Heart and a two-part Music of the Spheres. And that takes us back to Coloratura.
Analyzing the lyrics we can find some positivist message about human power to be better and learn to love and walk together. It is uncertain how much the writing process might have drunk from religious sources, although it sounds like it did, what is really interesting is the journey the song builds. According to Coloratura, we are going somewhere as species, trying to find our place in the cosmos, looking for a place in the world. And the band builds the search as grand as possible. It sounds a lot like a “Parachutes-X&Y” vibe, and yet, totally brand new. The intro to the song is two minutes long that sounds like a movie soundtrack. And that is when I searched for the meaning of Coloratura as a word, which is Italian for coloring and defines (and I quote) an “elaborate ornamentation of a vocal melody, especially in operatic singing by a soprano”. And yet, the lyrics transform it into a place where “everyone’s allowed” and “those who came before us” are “welcoming us now”.
That is probably the most important takeaway from the song. We have nothing but love, but each other, we’re supposed to get there together, not alone.
“In the end, it’s all about the love you’re sending out”.
