London-based pop rock act Coldplay released their 10th studio album titled Moon Music, on Friday, October 4th. The album features 10 tracks and is 44 minutes long. It’s a pop album that incorporates a space theme, while also bringing in some funk, electronic, and afrobeat influences.
Coldplay made their mark in 2000, releasing their debut album Parachutes. It was a commercial success and quickly met with many positive reviews. It quickly reached number one in the UK, and received many accolades. As of 2020, the album had sold 13 million copies worldwide. They followed up their success in 2002 with their second studio album A Rush of Cold Blood to the Head, and reached the peak of their songwriting and production ability with their third album Viva La Vida in 2008.
Recently, however, Coldplay’s reputation in the pop-rock scene has been at its lowest. Their 9th album released in 2021, Music of the Spheres, was met with poor reviews. Many long-time listeners of the group noted the album as basic, with very little experimentation or memorability. It didn’t seem like they had put a lot of effort into the project.
The conversation that has surrounded Coldplay over the past few years is whether they’ve “sold out”, only to make stadium-filling albums with no long-lasting impact. Many claim they lost the spark that made them so big in the first place. With the release of Moon Music, it does sound to me that the band has brought a bit of their experimentation back.
The album is heavily focused on an orchestral sound, with a few of the songs featuring guitars and drums. Many of the tracks tend to have long instrumentals, that don’t feature too many lyrics. This is apparent with the first track on the album, the title track MOON MUSIC. It begins with a large orchestral build-up, which then transitions into a soft piano ballad. Chris Martin brings in a lot of deep vocals to this one which I enjoyed. I thought this was a beautiful opener and one of the better tracks on the album.
The second track, feelslikeimfallinginlove, was released as the lead single a few months prior. It’s a love song with a catchy chorus. Sonically it’s one of the more simple-sounding tracks on the album, with straightforward lyrics that accompany it. It sounds nice, but past that, it doesn’t stand out a whole lot. It’s followed up with WE PRAY, a song with some large energy and pretty solid instrumentation, again bringing in an orchestra. It has a lot of features from other artists that all add some good variety to it.
JUPiTER has a nice acoustic guitar that drives the song forward and has some neat vocals where Martin taps into his upper register. While it’s catchy enough, the song isn’t super memorable and teeters on being basic. The vocals do shine, though. GOOD FEELiNGS is a groovy summer song with good vocal additions from Ayra Starr.
🌈 (ALiEN HiTS, ALiEN RADiO) is easily the best song on this album. 6 minutes of pure beauty! It’s split into three parts, with sections of ambient violins, light piano ballads, and great vocals from Will Champion that transition into each other so well, making for a fantastic piece of music. It finishes with a spoken word piece by the late Maya Angelou, speaking about a 19th-century African American song with the phrase “When it looked like the sun wasn’t gonna shine anymore, God put a rainbow in the clouds.” I love the inclusion of this and how it ties in well with not just the song, but the album as a whole. It perfectly captures the spacey vibe the group is going for on this album. This is one I’ll be revisiting quite often.
Unfortunately, it’s followed up by one of the less memorable tracks on the album, iAAM. It’s got some nice piano bits and good vocals but is overall just a bit too plain. AETERNA has Martin’s best vocal work on the album, specifically in the chorus. It’s got a solid groove to it. It seems to be a standout for a lot of Coldplay fans, and I can understand why.
ALL MY LOVE is a very simple piano ballad. While the lyrics are sweet, they are also quite basic, so this one doesn’t do too much for me, though it does come together at the end. ONE WORLD is the closer of the album and is mainly an ambient piece with a small verse. It repeats the phrase “In the end, it’s just love”. As simple as the phrase is, I do really like it and this song does feel deserving of being the closer.
Overall, this was a step up from their previous album. It captures their space theme very well, and features a lot of beautiful instrumentation, though I will admit I am a little biased towards orchestras. Despite that, the instrumentation does give the album a lot of pacing issues, with some parts going on a bit too long and lots of empty space. It feels a little directionless and messy, trying to balance a bit too many vibes in the tracklist.
The weakest part of the album to me is the songwriting. We did not get many lyrics in some of the songs, and the ones we do get are just a bit too straightforward. It’s an album centered around love, but barely scratches the surface of much of the love themes they touched on. Songwriting in general for the band has gone downhill with each album they have put out.
I don’t think Moon Music is bad, though I doubt it will put Coldplay back into the current music conversation. The instrumentation shines, but it’s dragged down by weak songwriting. So far the album has received mixed reviews, with many fans enjoying it, while others say it was a letdown. I am interested to see how thoughts change in a few months when the album is given more time to settle. Only time will tell.
I give Moon Music a 5.5/10. -J.S.