
I have despised Coldplay ever since I first heard their "breakthrough" hit,
Yellow, in 2000. They have gone on to become massively successful, but to me, their popularity is utterly mystifying and their appeal seems to have completely passed me by.
Here's a comprehensive (but by no means exhaustive) list of reasons why I hate Coldplay.
1. Chris MartinLet's face it, he's an absolute, Grade A buffoon. From
storming out of interviews to championing mung beans, absolutely everything this tiresome, unshaven nonentity does or says pains me in a way akin to having my scrotum sheared off by a cheese grater (appropriately enough!) and then having vinegar thrown over the resultant gash to sterilise the wound.
I hate his so-called falsetto. It's truly unbearable. I remember one episode of
Top Cat where Officer Dibble somehow fell over the side of a ship, scraping his nails all the way down the metal as he tried to stop himself from falling in the water. That was like the sound of someone scraping their nails down a blackboard, turned up to 11. To my ears, Chris Martin's voice is
even worse than that.
2. The other threeUnless you were actually "into" Coldplay, or you could be arsed looking them up on Wikipedia or something, you'd be hard pressed to name the other three band members. The are grey men made entirely out of wet cardboard, glued together with stale sperm and stodgy porridge whose collective crime against humanity is to provide the bland "soundtrack" to Martin's excruciating caterwaul.
3. The musicOkay, I must confess, I did sort of like
The Scientist. But that's it. Everything else I have heard by Coldplay has simultaneously made my ears, eyes, nose and backside bleed uncontrollably.
Yellow was so desperate to be some kind of indie-lite (that's "in the style of" indie as opposed to actually being released on an independent label) anthem with its hideous ching-ching-ching-ching guitar "signature" and Martin's oh-I'm-so-tortured-and-unshaven yodelling all over the top. With a few more effects pedals,
Yellow would have been completely identical to any other shoegazing indie "classic" from a decade earlier. Eight years later and I am still bamboozled as to how this track became so popular. It beggars belief.
Their music makes me feel like I have the flu.
4. The nameSeriously, what exactly does
Coldplay actually mean? It probably translates roughly into "Pretentious, unshaven angst toss".
I hate these stupid, made-up, nonsensical compound words which bands seem to like to adopt as their monikers. During the course of the 1990s, the law was changed to stop bands from giving themselves monosyllabic names (Lush, Ride, Curve, Loop, Top, Spin, Chunk, Gash, Flange, Bum, Knob, Hole), but the result was just a tiresomely hideous mess of made-up compound words (Radiohead, Sparklehorse, Silverchair, Smashmouth, Adjectivenoun, Verbnoun, Nounnoun, Chopcock, Hurtarse, Eyeburst, Razorlight and, of course, Coldplay). Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
5. Everything elseLet's make this an ongoing project. I want to hear from you...
Working on the (not unreasonable) assumption that you
absolutely hate Coldplay too, why not list your reasons, starting from number 6, in the comments section?
This could be quite a cathartic exercise for us all.