#92 The Best Album of 2000 Match #38: Coldplay vs. Mirah
Hey folks!
Today’s Best Album of 2000 match is:
#50 Coldplay, PARACHUTES
Listen on Spotify or YouTube
vs.
#79 Mirah, YOU THINK IT’S LIKE THIS BUT REALLY IT’S LIKE THIS
Listen on Spotify or YouTube
To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email (kentmbeeson@hey.com) or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.
We have a Designated Cheerleader today! It’s for PARACHUTES! Yes, PARACHUTES! It’s from @megabrow12.bsky.social and he’s not “yellow” to cheer for it! Okay I’ll shut up now.
Coldplay are rubbish. I know this, because UK music twitter told me this, relentlessly, until about 2020 when they got replaced by Mumford & Sons. If a comedian on a stage or a panel show was going to talk about music, Coldplay were the punchline. To be clear – it is NOT OKAY to like Coldplay. There are reasons for this, of course. A list follows!
Firstly, they are spectacularly successful – they have proper hit singles, and people buy their albums in supermarkets, and they go to massive stadiums to watch them on a big screen from far away. Although the concept of ‘selling out’ was mostly broken by Play/Moby, these were still things bands weren’t supposed to do. A decade or so later and no one cared less about the Arctic Monkeys being all those things.
Secondly, the band themselves marked the beginning of a post-Blair gentrification of everything. Coldplay are one of the first major UK bands that aren’t from anywhere. They met at university – and a posh one at that. Unforgivable. Even bands that sound like they met at art college (Hi Gomez!) were mostly from their home town.
Thirdly, there is Chris Martin. By Album 3 he had a film star girlfriend with a sideline in vaginal steaming and coffee enemas. He was festooned with wristbands and crosses on his hands and what appeared to be a Bono sized ‘rock star’ personality.
Fourthly, by album 3 they had mostly made the same album 3 times. Y’know, very successfully, but all of this was enough for the music snobs of this world (me included probably in the early 00s) to decry Coldplay as not proper music.
Some of this is perfectly valid criticism, some is not, but today in 2024 it is not okay to like Coldplay. But! My fine bestalbum friends, we are not in 2024, we are in the year 2000. And I ask you to forget everything you know about Coldplay in the dark days of 2024 where everything is terrible, and listen to Parachutes through your year 2000 ears. Younger, more optimistic, less jaded – those ears. And what you will hear is the result of some perfectly nice people who love music and wanted to write some very nice songs. They sit about their student accommodation and do exactly that, between coursework or whatever.
“hey Chris Martin! Can you shift those post-it notes – we’re trying to write some songs here”
“sure can…one of the other ones..they’re always Yellow aren’t they? Post-it notes. Like those stars over there. Hang on write that down!”“Sorry Chris Martin, can’t hear you over the washing machine – it’s on the high speed spin cycle”
And that’s what Parachutes is. Songs about washing machines which happened to translate really well live, played by very good musicians, written by a band who just happened to have a front man who was destined for rock stardom. It’s a very good album.Is it the best album of 2000? No. I won’t even ask you to vote for it. All I ask is that you try and listen to it through your year 2000 ears, and forget everything that came next.
Yesterday, #15 Aimee Mann, BACHELOR NO. 2 (OR, THE LAST REMAINS OF THE DODO) defeated #114 Don Caballero, AMERICAN DON, 63-26-1.
Thank you everyone, for voting and reading!
Kent