it is my great pleasure to introduce to you the first guest post, and guest poster, on In Bed With Amy Wilson.
Appropriately, this person was also the first friend I had who -- way back in high school -- was singularly obsessed with Pop Music.
(And I do mean singularly, since it was always one act at a time. Always!)
Although our lives first became inextricably entwined when his locker happened to be right next to mine in the hallowed halls of West Sylvan Middle School, my fondest memories of this friend were formed in the back of a tenth-grade math class wherein the teacher -- either laidback or just lazy -- inevitably gave us mostly of the class period to work on our homework for the night.
Inevitably we spent this time discussing music, endlessly anagramming our own names and others', and otherwise obliviously irritating our fellow man.
We made too many jokes about the punctuation necessary to indicate a factorial operation RIGHT ALONGSIDE some life-long memories.
5!
I mention this silly exclamation point thing because this friend of mine is perhaps the most unreservedly enthusiastic human being I have met, and I love that just as much as in 10th grade he loved first Led Zeppelin, then Bob Dylan, then Neil Young.
I now leave you to the capable hands of my dear friend Matthew Stahlman and his essay "Viva La Coldplay Or, Pop As Pop Philosophy".
Yrs,
A "Nay, I'm Slow" W
*
Power comes and goes. We are all familiar with novels and films about downtrodden individuals who achieve a degree of autonomy or self-realization (Batman Begins, for instance), or about the strong descending into extreme weakness (Leaving Las Vegas, The Wrestler), or those in which multiple trajectories occur concurrently or consecutively (The Artist). The course of our lives seem to subvert any instinctive desire to acquire and keep power. One thinks of Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I: with his ironic slacker ethos and existentialist cry of “Give me life,” Falstaff is pricking at moral certainty, of course, but with his lack of ambition to be king, he also indicates how the course of life tends to upset power-structures.
Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, or Death and All His Friends is, as the title suggests, chiefly an album about life, and more specifically an album about power as seen through a Falstaffian prism. Its protagonists tend to have been weak and are becoming strong, or vice versa; they are, literally and metaphorically, both deposed kings and revolutionaries. What’s particularly interesting, in the context of Coldplay’s whole catalog, is how unsentimental this album is. Whatever their faults, Coldplay can reliably put together a moving, compassion-flavored love ballad, such as X & Y’s “Fix You,” but there is no “Fix You” here; the album wants to understand emotional plight (especially as it relates to power) as much as it wants to achieve catharsis.
Let's look at a specific example or two of how this functions.
*
Several reviews have singled out "Lost" as an example of Chris Martin's lazy, cliche-riddled lyrics, but of course, cliches alone don't render words worthless -- if there is substance to the ideas. "Lost" is a portrait of resolve:
Just because I'm losing
Doesn't mean I'm lost
Doesn't mean I'll stop
Doesn't mean I will cross
...
You might be a big fish
Doesn’t mean you’ve won
‘Cause along may come a bigger one.
It's a revenge song, sure, but it also gestures towards the album’s central theme: life's subversion of individual power. Martin's imagining a sort of Wheel of Fortune paradigm; everyone gets a chance both to succeed and fail. This paradigm is observed somewhat dispassionately: there’s plenty of loudness but there aren’t any huge string swells or crescendoes, which, for a Coldplay song, is somewhat jarring.
*
Standout single "Viva La Vida” is only more of the same: a deposed king remembering his past glory, feeling perhaps like a tragic figure but also perhaps some gratitude at not having to struggle with the pressures of power anymore. “Just a puppet on a lonely string / Ah, who would ever want to be king,” he reflects.
*
The other songs tend to either tackle these themes directly ("Death and All His Friends," “Violet Hill”) or obliquely ("Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love,” “Yes”). Again, with the possible exception of "Strawberry Swing,” sentimentality is avoided. As for the melodies and arrangements -- it's a Coldplay album. Yes, Brian Eno is producing, and yes, he by all accounts not only did amazing technical work but also successfully pushed the band to expect more of themselves. But Coldplay were never slouches, sonically -- a bit derivative, but always adept. Everyone has their favorite musical moments on this album; mine include the wailed backing vocals of "Violet Hill", the twinkling piano of "Reign of Love", and the midsection of "Death and All His Friends", which feels like it should soundtrack the trailer to an indie coming-of-age love-story film.
*
The little moments of musical genius are strewn all over. But again, it's Coldplay. What did you expect? They're a great pop band. They made a great pop album.
The big story, then, is the lyrics. Here, for once, Chris Martin isn't set up as the high priest of compassion, who will lovingly soundtrack your breakup/reverse-slow-mo-car-
Matthew Stahlman is a graduate of Lewis and Clark College and works as a barista. He enjoys playing guitar and watching Christopher Nolan films, and also spends a great deal of time thinking about music and contemporary French philosophy -- especially while in bed.
