Coldplay’s third album Parachutes turns 25 years old this year.
Released on July 10, 2000, Parachutes is the debut album of the now internationally renowned British rock band Coldplay. While the album didn’t constitute an entirely successful break into the music scene in North America, it quickly reached number one in the U.K. and has reached Platinum nine times since its release.
In celebration of Parachutes’ 25th anniversary, let’s look back at three of my favourite songs from the album.
“Sparks”
“Sparks” quietly entwines with the sonic cohesiveness displayed in the record’s first three tracks, further developing the thematic kinship that Parachutes anthologizes in its 10-song run.
As a whisht, ambling acoustic guitar line euphoniously unfurls, “Sparks” yawns to life. The smoky thrumming of an electric bass quietly becomes the mainstay of the song and its intonation a staple atmospheric instrumentation on the rest of the album. As “Sparks” reaches the end of its first verse, the perfect way Martin’s sonorous baritone complements the track’s tonal assonance is indisputable, rising and falling in waves of rich, decadent vocalization.
The delicate twinkling of an ascending piano scale characterizes the track’s chorus, building harmonic tension as it climbs higher and higher. Yet, just when the scale is about to reach a perfect melodic crescendo, it falls off, dropping back to the initial note that began the ascension. By abandoning the completion of the musical phrase, the listener is left desperately yearning for resolution and begging for melodic closure. This need isn’t satiated until the end of the track’s final chorus when the progression finally reaches its highest note, resolving the incomplete melodic phrase and bringing the song to a satisfying conclusion.
“Trouble”
“Trouble,” the album’s sixth track, is a good example of songwriting that successfully mediates the inherent power struggle that can exist between robust instrumentation and vociferous vocalization in an intensely emotional song.
A soulful, lamenting piano melody opens the song, its scarcely varying repetition veiled behind the resonant and full-bodied orchestration that suffuses the rest of the track. Its haunting, plaintive nature, while soft in the beginning, continuously builds as “Trouble” progresses, laying the foundation for the hypnotic, sonic atmosphere that characterizes the entirety of the song.
By the end of the first chorus, uncomfortable moments of harmonic dissonance intertwine apprehensively with Martin’s melancholic vocals, croaking and cracked from pleading. These moments, while discordant and unharmonious, cohesively resonate with the emotional struggle presented in Martin’s narrative lyrics to pull the whole of “Trouble” together in a beautifully devastating bow.
“Yellow”
While “Sparks” and “Trouble” expertly exhibit the comprehensive tone of the record, it is only “Yellow,” the album’s hit single and arguably one of the band’s best songs, that can truly make sense of the ingenuity that wrought Parachutes.
Although one may be fooled by the first few bars of the track, “Yellow” does not exist in the same melancholic, hushed microcosm that much of the rest of the album inhabits. Within moments of the song beginning, a detonation of musical mayhem shatters any preconceived notions developed during the album’s first three tracks, sending “Yellow” skyrocketing into a brand-new universe of sonic extremity.
While moments of Parachutes’ quintessential stillness can still be identified in the track’s main verses, they are interspersed between cosmic explosions of musical innovation that send the listener on a wild goose chase of emotion. Punctuating these moments is a rough and raring electric guitar riff, thick with uncontrollable fervor and rich with unpolished intensity.
As Martin sings of profound, unbridled love, the growling ferocity of the guitar line echoes his meaning back to him. In all of its chaos and quiet, “Yellow” is a perfect representation of the reality of romantic intimacy.
Love is rash. Love is chaotic. Love is uncomfortable. Love is loud and quiet and angry and beautiful. Love is everything all at once.
This is the story Parachutes is trying to tell and “Yellow,” in all its complexities, understands the profound intricacy of this message so acutely that it could never have been anything but a timeless hit.