Coldplay: "Paradise"

Fuck it, I’m just a complete and utter cheeseball when it comes to Coldplay. I imagine it’s like being addicted to awful drugs, but my iPod says I’ve listened to “Paradise” seventeen times since I first downloaded it, and that doesn’t look to be easing up any time soon.

Give Chris Martin this: he has no interest in half measures. The one-two production punch of Brian Eno and Arcade Fire guru Markus Dravs paid dividends on 2008’s Viva la Vida, and Coldplay double-down on that sound here, promoting Dravs to head producer and allowing him to craft a widescreen sound epic enough to make Neon Bible (2007) appear modest. Everything about “Paradise” suggests it was written solely for 30,000 seat rooms and/or Gossip Girl slo-mo montages, and really, if you’re still onboard at album number five, why should one expect any less? Further, Martin has seemingly ceased trying for profundity with his lyrics at this point, and good for him—in his chosen genre, rhyming “when she was just a girl” with “she expected the world” is more than enough.

I like Coldplay because they play to my inner fifteen-year-old’s sweet spot for arena Brit-rock melodrama, have a good sense of dynamics, and were self aware enough to hire Brian Eno after the colossal face plant that was 2005’s X&Y. “Paradise” plays to their, um, strengths. I’m allowed.