Why do you like Coldplay?

by Will Seeley

You may remember a month or so ago, Coldplay did a special, hush hush show at the Fillmore. Well, maybe it wasn’t so hush hush, because everybody wanted to go. It was THE hot ticket. In my job as record store geek, one thing I get to do is pass along the employees’ requests for free tickets to the appropriate label and distributor people. Lots of requests for that one. Except me. I didn’t really care. I should have cared, at least for the experience of going to a special event and being part of the in crowd. But maybe I gave up on that long ago.

And now the new album is coming out, and people are excited. All around me, the whispers and psychotic energy swirl. And I think to myself: what am I missing? I don’t hate Coldplay in the way that I hate Audioslave. It’s nice enough. But I don’t get excited about it, either. Yet they obviously have the magic spark that touches listeners. (Or should I say, HE has the magic spark. Everyone I talked to referred to Coldplay exclusively in terms of Chris Martin, the main dude. One anonymous source even went backstage at the Fillmore concert and admitted that she didn’t know if the other guys in the band were there because she had no idea what they looked like!)

So I did the only sensible thing. I started asking people what I was missing. If you haven’t done this as an exercise, try it sometime. Walk up to complete strangers, on the authority that you work for a magazine, and ask them why they like Coldplay. See what happens.

What happened to me is that mostly people thought I was insane. Why is that? In this country are we so used to hanging up on telemarketers that an honest question immediately provokes anger? I can’t even (well I could if I wanted to) print what some people said to me. Does liking Coldplay include a genetic tendency towards aggressiveness? Towards antisocial behavior? Is liking Coldplay genetic or environmental?

Plus, I thought we were fast becoming a nation of evangelists, where it was a citizen’s responsibility to convince the unconvinced. We treat our rock stars and movie stars like gods, but we don’t proseletize in their cause?

Truly, though, what I did discover is that the hold that Coldplay has on people (aggression aside) is unnameable. The most common answer to “Why do you like Coldplay” is: “Because he’s hot!” Well, OK. What about the music? “I don’t know, I just do.” That doesn’t help me! First, I’m a straight guy, so the hot angle doesn’t do a lot for me. Then “I don’t know, I just do?” What do I do with that information? I swear to you, I got that answer again and again and again.
You may think I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not. I’m a guy who likes pop music. I just managed to gloss over Coldplay and now the band’s own fans won’t tell me what I’m missing. I want to understand, both as a music lover and now as an amateur cultural anthropologist.

I think we can conclude that “He’s hot!” isn’t the total answer, although I do recognize that mass acceptance and stardom necessitates that one be good looking, especially in the modern age. Every day on TV and in the magazines, we’re exposed to some “hot” new band whose main criteria for being on TV is that they look the part. Natalie Imbruglia didn’t have the substance to go with her hotness, and now we barely remember her.

But not so Coldplay. This is their third album, and they’ll sell out stadiums wherever they go, etc. etc. They have the oomph to make it and to continue making it. They even figured out a way to patch up their interpersonal differences without resorting to fistfights.

So, over the course of my research, one thing gave me hope, and that was that some people made vague references to Radiohead, a band that I also came to late. So it might not be too late for me after all. Also, over the course of the questioning, several possibilities became apparent. Reasons, or hypotheses, if you will, for the value of Coldplay.

1) Let’s dispense with the obvious, which is songwriting, good singing and tight musicianship. This all goes without saying.
They’re British. That counts for something, especially among the Anglophile community. There used to be a girl that worked at Rasputin who listened to British rock bands exclusively. But I’m pretty sure you can’t fill stadiums nationwide with Anglophiles.

2) He plays piano. The piano thing seems to be the sign of the times, which means that Elton John was a visionary. Look at the huge popularity of Norah Jones and Alicia Keys and Tori Amos, as well as the recent re-appreciation of Ray Charles. As a culture we’ve decided that our pop stars don’t have to just play guitar.

3) Mass appeal to the Ladies (the He’s Hot theory). Most of the Coldplay fans, real fans, I came across were women. The Grand Theory would be that sensitive songwriters who play piano and happen to be hot inspire women more than men. My friend shot this one down, at least partially, when he told me that there was a large male contingent at the Fillmore concert. But I’m still pretty convinced that Chris Martin and co. have a good angle with the Ladies.

4) Some kind of mind control. The evidence that most fans couldn’t articulate what they like about Coldplay makes me think “hypnosis” and “cult”. Equally strange is that anyone who responded negatively, saying “No, I don’t like Coldplay”, when asked why, also said “I don’t know.”

As you can imagine, over the course of my inquiry, people started to make fun of me. The prevailing theory was that if I wanted to learn about Coldplay, what I ought to do is actually LISTEN to Coldplay. Which, quite honestly, didn’t occur to me. I do actually listen to music, and I tend to always have stacks of CDs as part of the current rotation. I work in a record store, for pete’s sake, I bet I could walk downstairs and find a copy I could listen to pretty much any day of the week. That is, if the cult members haven’t bought them all. And besides, I’m kind of used to getting promos of things, and Coldplay’s new album qualifies as a high-security release, which means they don’t give it to you before street date (while I’m writing this) so you don’t pirate it and sell it on E-Bay.

So I guess I’ll have to keep on slogging it out. I’ll keep my ears open for when other people are playing the radio and it happens to be Coldplay. I’ll make sure I at least glance through the magazines with Chris and Gwyneth on the cover. I’ll listen to the new album. I’ll be convinced. I’m convinced of that. Just you wait and see.