When Coldplay Ruled the World: The True Story of Viva La Vida

By the time 2008 arrived, Coldplay were arguably the biggest rock
band in the world. With their uplifting, emotionally charged soft
rock, Coldplay quickly established themselves as heirs to U2.
From the release of their debut album, Parachutes, in 2000, the
band caught lightning in a bottle. The album’s wistful second
single, “Yellow,” was an international hit.


Their second album, 2002’s A Rush of Blood to the Head, elevated
them to the next level, selling more than 17 million copies and
netting them 3 Grammy Awards. Coldplay were no longer the little
Brit band that could, they were the big Brit band that did!
Singer Chris Martin was now a bona fide heartthrob, but he wasn’t
on the market for long. He met Gwyneth Paltrow on tour and - boom
- one year later they were married! 


After that, life and touring slowed things down a little for
Coldplay, but in 2005 they returned with their third album,
X&Y. Although it didn’t show much progress creatively, the
album once again sold kajillions of copies and gave us the
mega-ballad “Fix You,” which Martin wrote for his famous wife
after her father died.


X&Y closed the book on what Coldplay’s album trilogy, as
guitarist Jonny Buckland would call it. He told Rolling Stone in
2008, “We felt like the first three albums were a trilogy, and we
finished that. So we wanted to do something different.” The band
found a new studio, converting an old bakery squished between an
estate agent and a restaurant that they could use as both a
headquarters and a space to rehearse and record. 


Taking a page out of U2’s book, the band hired Brian Eno, the
father of ambient music, to co-produce their next album. Known
for helping artists like U2 and Talking Heads expand their sound,
when Coldplay first asked the producer what they should do
differently this time around, he was, well, brutally honest.


In a 2008 interview with Rolling Stone, Chris Martin recalled how
Brian Eno did not hold back, saying quote 


“Your songs are too long. And you’re too repetitive, and you use
the same tricks too much, and big things aren’t necessarily good
things, and you use the same sounds too much, and your lyrics are
not good enough.”


With Eno now on board, and a hunger to truly reinvent every facet
of themselves, Coldplay would embark on their most ambitious
project yet: Viva La Vida.


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