While Everyday Life is bursting with thoughts on modern life, it also has the big-tent pop moments that made Coldplay one of the 21st century’s most reliable arena acts.
Closing a decade defined by stadium-sized hits of optimism, Coldplay manages to grow even bigger with Everyday Life, absorbing flavors from across the globe with their most indulgent and, perhaps, poignant album yet.
These songs are sometimes more exciting in theory than in practise, but ‘Everyday Life’ regularly steps to the left-field, proving that Coldplay are more adventurous than they’re often given credit for.
All told, Everyday Life is an album of exploration, a wandering excursion of sound and tone, of feeling and reflection. It doesn’t have as many immediate show stoppers as we’ve been fed in the past, rather it offers a more subtle and scaled back approach to presenting its messages.
Everyday Life certainly shatters the illusion that Coldplay is a boring, safe band – so if nothing else, that’s a start.
They are here to make a statement while also releasing their familiar emotional ballads. Everyday Life mixes the magic of “old” Coldplay with their smash hits that have kept them at the top for so long. And it works.
Everyday Life lives between the stripped-down comfort of Ghost Stories and the mercurial nature of Viva La Vida, but most importantly, it provides more hope than ever that they have another masterpiece in them.
They sound refreshed, revitalised, and on their best form since Viva La Vida, even if the quality does vary throughout the record.
Everyday Life is, like everyday life, kind of a mess—a jumble of ideas and aspirations and successes and failures. In that way, it might be the most human thing Coldplay has ever done.
Tackling gun control and police brutality, Coldplay’s eighth album is a valiant, if flawed, attempt to break from tradition.
Everyday Life may not be able to reach the peaks of Coldplay’s work in the 2000s or have the discipline of the mostly-minimalist Ghost Stories, but it shows a level of creativity, imagination and sheer enjoyment in making music that felt like it had been lost.
Balancing continued vast commercial success with something more exploratory is tough to do ... On Everyday Life, Coldplay use the breadth of a double album to try again.
Everyday Life has more blunders than hits, but let's give Coldplay some credit — they've got a "go big or go home" attitude that's entertaining, even when it misses the mark.
Everyday Life is a well-produced but unfocused album with an incomplete message.
Over the course of the whole record, the uninspired songwriting becomes a bit tiring, so the album as a whole is a disappointment for a band with so much talent and past successes, especially as prior to its release Everyday Life was suggested to be an experimental album and is anything but.
Coldplay releasing a better album than Kanye West is probably the plot twist of the year
Mr Martin may I direct your attention to the latest edition of 'The Rules of Rock n' Roll', in particular can I get you to read Rule 1, yes the first thing in the book that's right:
1. If it has been long established that you are a butt boring band UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES are you allowed to release a double album.
Also:
12. Never pad out your album with hymns.
Also also:
17. If you have run dry on inspiration just add in more gospel.
You're saying you did add a little gospel...ok, but did ... read more
“Everyday Life” is bold, uncharted territory for Coldplay. ‘Arabesque’ is their first use of psychedelia or profanity or jazz.
this “double album” effort attempts to create an atmospheric journey; a successor similar to that of the Head Full of Dreams tour.
“Guns” contains urgent guitars with lyrics of political turmoil, and “Trouble in Town” ends with a retelling of police brutality in Philadelphia
it's boring at its worst but genuinely engaging at its best. one of the first interesting coldplay albums in a while.
A surprising album that I didn't really see coming from Coldplay but a plenty one nontheless. Its a bit bloated and has some rather boring moments. But the overall theme and mood of the album was a welcome reminder that they are still capable of making some songs like their early era of music.
The Coldplay Defender Saga: Episode 8
A big step up from Head Full of Dreams. The band is experimenting like I wanted and it works. I do wish some of these tracks were longer though, the two-minute tracks are good, but just don't get enough time to be fully realized tracks
Favorite Track: Arabesque
Least Favorite Track: Old Friends
1 | Sunrise 2:31 | 73 |
2 | Church 3:50 | 77 |
3 | Trouble In Town 4:38 | 85 |
4 | BrokEn 2:30 | 68 |
5 | Daddy 4:58 | 80 |
6 | WOTW/POTP 1:16 | 63 |
7 | Arabesque 5:40 | 90 |
8 | When I Need a Friend 2:35 | 69 |
1 | Guns 1:55 | 72 |
2 | Orphans 3:17 | 75 |
3 | Èkó 2:37 | 72 |
4 | Cry Cry Cry 2:47 | 66 |
5 | Old Friends 2:26 | 68 |
6 | بنی آدم 3:14 | 66 |
7 | Champion of the World 4:17 | 78 |
8 | Everyday Life 4:18 | 80 |
#28 | / | Rolling Stone |
#43 | / | NME |
/ | AllMusic |