Stars and Slights: Why Is Coldplay So Popular?

Maybe I just don't get it. Maybe my taste in music isn't as good as yours. Maybe my ears aren't fine-tuned enough to recognize musical genius.

Or maybe...just maybe, Coldplay is incredibly overrated.

Coldplay has experienced an enormous amount of success. Make no mistake about it, selling upwards of 32.5 million albums worldwide doesn't happen by accident. I even enjoy a few of their songs. "Fix You," "The Scientist," "Twisted Logic," "Yellow," and "Shiver" are excellent songs.

After watching a recent live performance of theirs, however, my contention that Coldplay is undeserving of their overwhelming praise has been confirmed. On Friday, June 27 Coldplay performed at 30 Rockefeller Plaza (30 Rock for short) as part of NBC's Toyota Summer Tour Series, which is a series featuring free concerts by popular artists.

Sure, this is the only (and likely last) time I've seen them play live and I didn't actually see them in person, but why should that matter? I heard everything that the crowd heard and, in fact, was able to see more of the band than most of the spectators there - some of whom lined up at 7pm on Thursday to get a chance to see their beloved Coldplay.

My list of grievances against Coldplay in no particular order:

One of their hit songs, Speed of Sound, is a rip off of one of their other hit songs, Clocks. I know the songs are not exactly the same, but the main riff from Clocks is simply modified to a slower tempo, dropped to a lower key, and played with slightly different accents. Don't believe me? Play them back to back and judge for yourself. Yeah, even the drum pattern is the same, just switched from onbeats to offbeats. I guess it isn't as bad as stealing someone else's music outright and claiming that your song is different.

"Theirs goes 'Ding ding ding dingy ding-ding.' Ours goes 'Ding ding ding ding dingy ding-ding'".
- Vanilla Ice

BONUS: Vanilla Queen

During their performance on the Today Show their lead singer, Chris Martin, messed up the lyrics to their newest single "Viva La Vida" - which is fine because no one is perfect and I, too, have messed up during a live performance - and proceeded to apologize to the crowd. "I messed up at the beginning but that's ok, you don't mind." Professionals have no need to apologize for messing up the lyrics or playing a wrong note... especially not immediately after they've made the mistake! A professional in that instance is supposed to act as if nothing went wrong. Have you ever seen a gymnast apologize to a judge after falling on a landing? Did you ever say "I'm sorry I messed up, but you don't mind, right?" to your teacher after incorrectly answering a question on a test? No. You own your mistakes and move on.

Also during the Today Show performance, Coldplay rocked out to a melodic jam off of their new album entitled "Lost." Not a terrible song. The keys sounded great, especially considering they could be heard without any of the musicians on stage actually playing them. See it for yourself.

The guitarist starts out playing the keys part, but then by the :45 mark you can see that he's playing his guitar, Martin is still bouncing around the stage, and no one is actually playing the keys. That's worse than lipsyncing. I guess if you're multi-millionaires you don't have to play all of your music, you can let a recording do it. Just ask Ashlee Simpson.