An Album a Day is posted 5 days a week, Monday-Friday
Today we are covering one of my favorite albums of all time, Viva La Vida or Death And All of His Friends by Coldplay. Now, Coldplay are not generally a band I get all that excited about. Even back when this was my favorite album I understood that I didn’t really care for most of Coldplay’s other stuff. Not to say that they are bad or uncreative, their earlier style just wasn’t my cup of tea. But Viva La Vida is exactly the type of alternative rock that I absolutely adore these days. I enjoyed this album when it first came out in 2008, in fact I enjoyed the lead single so much that I made this my first album purchase ever.
I bought this album from Whole Foods in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when I was 11 years old and made my brother put it his CD player while we sat in bumper to bumper traffic in the rain. This album was the second CD that I discovered sounded really good being endlessly looped through my boom box, the other being America’s Greatest Hits album. I’m not sure what about the track Viva La Vida first grabbed my attention; I think it was either the fact that he was clearly telling a story about a Napoleon type character in a pop song or simply the viva la revolution! Feel of the whole thing.
I bought this album from Whole Foods in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when I was 11 years old and made my brother put it his CD player while we sat in bumper to bumper traffic in the rain. This album was the second CD that I discovered sounded really good being endlessly looped through my boom box, the other being America’s Greatest Hits album. I’m not sure what about the track Viva La Vida first grabbed my attention; I think it was either the fact that he was clearly telling a story about a Napoleon type character in a pop song or simply the viva la revolution! Feel of the whole thing.
While I’d describe a lot of the elements on this album as vaguely world music sounding, there was something definitively French Revolution about the sound of the title track. From the beginning to end every song on this album is fantastic, with the mix of strings, world music, piano rock and Johnny Buckland doing his best The Edge impersonation meshing perfectly together.
This album mixes arena rocking and ambient music together into a fairly unique and awesome combination. The best tracks on this album are the two title tracks, along with Yes and Violet Hill, while the only real low point for me is Strawberry Swing sitting between Violet Hill and Death and All Of His Friends.
As previously mentioned, Viva La Vida is an anthemic rock track that oozes with the French Revolution vibe the band was evoking with this album. The song tells the tale of a dethroned king who now lives in poverty and isolation, seemingly being sung from the perspective of a Napoleon like character, post exile. This was certainly the most radio ready song on the album but it’s style is very weird for top 40 success as it is one of the most definitively rock songs Coldplay have ever had get popular.
My personal favorite track on the album, Yes, features Chris Martin singing in his lower baritone register to add variety to the album. As a baritone myself I always loved this song because it was one of the few Coldplay songs I could sing easily. Along with Martin’s seductive low vocals this track features some of the coolest violin parts on the record. Apparently this track was inspired heavily by The Velvet Underground, which are supposed to be the originators of the alternative rock sound. Along with this influence, band members have commented that the hidden track Chinese Sleep Chant at the end of this song is meant to be a parody of shoegaze and of My Bloody Valentine specifically.
Next we have Violet Hill, a track that is vaguely political but in the kind of way where you can pretty much insert any political opinion into the song. I actually really like these kinds of songs, because I really don’t care to hear political ranting in music, with exceptions made for Rage Against The Machine and anti-Vietnam songs because of the quality of music. This track works amazing well at making me feel the cold winter that Martin sings about, the synths and piano stabs convey this feeling very well. The lyrics are kind of a mash of jumbled words that sort of tell a story, but the delivery of the song makes up for the sometimes disjointed storytelling.
Lastly we have the other title track and album closer Death and All of His Friends. This track could easily be described as Violet Hill part 2, with the same cold feeling and disjointed storytelling over music that pulls the whole thing together. The album actually closes with a hidden track inside of Death and All of His Friends called The Escapist, which seems to be the existentialist crises of Chris Martin leaking out.
The track features the repeated line “And, In the end we lie awake, and we dream of making our escape” over the music from the album opener Life In Technicolor. This makes the album easy to listen to on repeat because of it's circular nature. I always took the lines to be a poetic description of being dead; the lines are also likely a reference to The End by The Beatles which has Paul McCartney singing “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”.
As I said at the beginning of this review, this is one of my favorite albums of all time, turning this review more into a sales pitch to go listen to it. While I’m biased in favor of this album because of the nostalgia for me, I legitimately believe this album is just as good as I’ve said it. One of the strongest points of this album for me is it enough of an arena rock album to be a pump up daytime listen and ambient enough to be listened to at night. I can’t even count how many times I fell asleep to this album as a kid or even as an adult. I’ve enjoyed this album for 9 years now and I fully expect to be enjoying it for many more to come; do yourself a favor and give it a listen.
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