Laura and I subscribed to The New Yorker recently, and there’s something soothing about its unceasing, unyielding weekly arrival. It feels detached from the machinations of reality, as though - were a “Last Of Us”-style zombie apocalypse to occur - the issues would still keep showing up, week after week, overflowing in empty and abandoned mailboxes across the country. The tone of its unfailingly well-written articles feels urgent and relevant, yet simultaneously distant and abstract. I read about the many strange and beautiful and horrifying things happening around our world, and I am, primarily, entertained. Much like my predisposition to turn the radio to NPR when I’m driving, I wonder: what it is about people with soothing voices talking about global atrocities next to indie and world music that I find appealing? Am I a better person for being informed? A worse person for being informed and doing little with the information I’m given? Do these outlets have a moral responsibility to better contextualize things, to not speak of countries at war next to a review of the new Big Thief album in largely the same tone?
These aren’t questions I’m going to tackle in the following paragraphs; indeed, they’re not even remotely relevant to what you’ll be reading here. Honestly, I just couldn’t think of a way to begin this piece, because it probably should have never been written in the first place. For I will now spend a not-inconsequential amount of my time and yours considering something that is extremely frivolous, yet that has consumed hours of my attention: The Coldplay song “Yellow.”
Let it be said, I like Coldplay. I truly liked their first two albums, and while I haven’t closely followed the band since, I enjoy any new single - up to and including their Chainsmokers collab “Just Like This,” which successfully manages combine an EDM/dubsteppy chorus with fuddy dad rock vibes in a sort of globalist feat of pop songwriting. From the start, I’ve found it lazy and annoying that Coldplay’s name is used as an automatic punchline by a certain set of music fan (though my indignance only extends so far, as the band seems to be doing fine with or without my support). To a critic who once described Coldplay’s work as” bedwetters music", guitarist Jonny Buckland responded by saying "We are trying to be who we are, you know. Pretending to be 'a bit mad' would just be sad.” That seems reasonable and genuine to me. I have no problem with pretty music made by nice people, and if you do, I think you should ask yourself why.
And they are nice people. Anything I hear anecdotally about the band confirms they’re much cooler humans than they need to be. One recent example - the percussionist Thor Harris played at Avalon several months ago, and spoke about experience of opening for Coldplay on tour as a member Shearwater. Not only, he said, did they pay Shearwater thousands of dollars per show - much more money than an opening act usually receives - but Chris Martin personally made sure that their dressing rooms were filled with flowers and wine at every stop. “They’re so nice,” Thor said, with a wondrous grin that I can only describe as post-ironic. “They’re just so nice.”
The fact is, however, that while Coldplay write compelling tunes and have assembled a massively appealing sound, their lyrics sit on the spectrum of serviceable to remarkably bad. I can’t really think of any other band so popular that has failed, as far as I know, to ever write a memorable or moving line of verse (please correct me if you have a Coldplay lyric tattooed on your ass or something). And while there’s nothing that interesting about mediocre lyrics, there’s something about bad ones that I find fascinating. To write a mediocre lyric is to simply resign one’s self to the readily-available world of platitudes and well-trod phrases; to write a bad lyric, on the other hand, is to reach for some level of originality and self-expression, only to notably fail. And being someone who’s interested in the creative process itself as much as the end results of said process, failure is almost as compelling to me as success.
“Yellow” is probably one of the prettiest and most catchy pop melodies written during my lifetime; to my mind, its lyrics also stand apart as some of the worst there are. They’re not obviously that bad. As Laura said when I ran this idea by her, “what’s wrong with you? It’s a nice love song.” That’s the thing - I think that when you take a closer look, it’s remarkably inept as a love song. The only reason people accept the song’s lyrics without question is because they’re attached to such a charming tune. But I’ll let you be the judge as to whether my criticisms are warranted, or I’m just being a snarky asshole, because I am now going offer a line-by-line dissection of the most popular song ever written about the color of urine: “Yellow.”
“Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you
And everything you do
Yeah, they were all yellow”
While we will soon descend into borderline gibberish, the song does open with its strongest lines. The image of the stars shining “for you” is a classic example of love song metaphysics, in which the machinations of the universe revolve around the object of the narrator’s affections. Furthermore, Coldplay perform the crucial task here of naming something (the stars) that is actually yellow; a thing that will prove surprisingly difficult as the song progresses.
“I came along
I wrote a song for you
And all the things you do
And it was called Yellow”
Here Coldplay turn to another tried and true lyrical conceit - one exemplified by Elton John’s “Your Song” - of referring to the song itself within its own lyrical structure. Rather than use this as a great reveal or central narrative arc, however, they introduce the idea in the second verse to no real effect and then immediately abandon it. Never again is it hinted that the narrator is aware of this being a song within a song. To my mind, then, this verse primarily serves to introduce the suspicion - one that will soon be reinforced - that Coldplay have already run out of things to talk about that are yellow.
“So then I took my turn
Oh, what a thing to have done
And it was all yellow”
While these lyrics are so vague as to be essentially meaningless, I can assume that “I took my tun” refers to the narrator pledging their love to the “you” character in some way. But what to make of “it was all yellow”? What, at this early point in the song, wherein we have yet to be oriented in any physical landscape, is “it all”? I find weird that, before we even reach the first verse of the song called “Yellow,” they would abandon the attempt to provide even one more piece of imagery that is actually yellow. A sunrise… Fire… Dandelions… Tigers... the third Chakra… sand on a beautiful beach… golden hair… A ring or necklace… the Grand Canyon… the trees in Fall… off the top of my head, these are a few yellow things that might find their way into a love song. Instead, however, Coldplay have plunged us into an entirely abstract universe, reminiscent of Plato’s world of forms, in which the only thing to grasp onto is the sense of a vague, yellowish pall. Time for the chorus:
“Your skin, oh yeah, your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
And you know, you know I love you so
You know I love you so”
Maybe it’s just me - I find these lines hilariously weird. “Your skin and bones turn into something beautiful” sounds like an alien creature devoid of emotion trying to write a human love song - so clinical and beside the point. Objectively, I suppose it is truly a wonder that we are somehow greater than the sum of our materialist parts; in some sense, they’re giving us the most mechanistic possible description of love. But to me, the mention of skin and bones in the context of a song called “Yellow” primarily brings to mind a withered, jaundiced body.
“I swam across
I jumped across for you
Oh, what a thing to do
'Cause you were all yellow”
Continuing to avoid reference to anything remotely anchored in a meaningful, concrete landscape, the narrator - best described as some sort of video game character at this point - swims and jumps across unnamed voids for you. And what a thing it was for him to do, apparently… because you were yellow. Lest we forget: your skin and bones are yellow.
“I drew a line
I drew a line for you
Oh, what a thing to do
And it was all yellow”
At this point, the words really just mush around in my mind like gravy. To search for meaning is clearly fruitless. But I’m not going to let them get away with it here. So I ask: What is the line? Where is the line being drawn? What is the line’s meaning? In what sense was it “for you?” WHAT ABOUT IT WAS YELLOW? To the second chorus:
“And your skin, oh yeah, your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
And you know, for you, I'd bleed myself dry
For you, I'd bleed myself dry”
This, for me, is really the icing on the cake - the line that cements these lyrics as being truly bad. As if the thought of yellow skin and bones couldn’t be more ghoulish, the narrator now pledges to “bleed myself dry.” Is it just me? This isn’t simply a failure at romanticism, it is horrifying imagery. In the context of a Nine Inch Nails song, these lyrics would be perfect; in this case, I struggle to understand the intent. As far as I can tell, it is a misplaced attempt to conjure an intensity of feeling, one completely at odds with the pretty, soothing, U2ish nature of the music.
“Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you
And all the things that you do”
And so we end where we began, with the tune’s one passable stanza. It’s my belief that these first and final lines are the only lyrics that really register with most people who listen to “Yellow,” and that is perhaps Coldplay’s greatest success: To have sandwiched a complete failure of a love song between two okay verses.
There aren’t many words to “Yellow,” which makes it all the more remarkable how bad most of them are. Indeed, I think what ultimately fascinates me is their proximity to being mediocre; with a few tweaks, these lyrics could simply been forgettable, semi-romantic drivel. Instead, in an attempt to conjure some level of originality, Coldplay produce something both incomprehensible and, when closely inspected, super strange. In an attempt to be poetic, our young lads have flown too close to one of the many yellow things they fail to sing about, the Sun. And the most interesting part? It’s still a great song. Why don’t you join 833 million fellow humans, and have a listen?
I also love Coldplay as much as I think Martin is unfit to wield a pen and paper
True! I'm also a Coldplay fan and find their competent music oddly soothing. It's wonderful and deserving that they have become a world-wide mega-success. About the lyrics, I agree they make very little sense so it many be a case of the words just sounding beautiful as they are pronounced and styled by the singer. The way Chris Martin sings the word "yellow" with his British accent is lovely. The word "bones" too, and his wistful struggling with "I drew a line for you" is magical. The lyrics add up to very little, but I suppose hit songs sometimes work for other reasons.