Coldplay’s latest album, Ghost Stories, has been hitting the headlines.
There are three reasons. 1. It has become the fastest-selling UK album of the year. 2. The band signed an exclusive deal with iTunes meaning that the album was not available on free music streaming websites like Spotify. 3. In an impressive publicity stunt, the band created an international scavenger hunt by hiding handwritten lyrics from the album in libraries across the world.
The album itself has almost been lost in the chatter, but among fans who have been waiting for it for three years the response to the music is mixed. Those who know Coldplay for their buoyant, stadium-filling anthems have found it surprising. Aside from the album’s first single, ‘Magic’, and the penultimate track, ‘A Sky Full of Stars’, the songs are mellow and downbeat. For other fans, this is its strength: it’s a return to the soothing ‘bath rock’ music that appeared on the band’s first album, Parachutes, released in 2000. But Ghost Stories is not just ambient; it has more than a tinge of sadness, and with good reason.
