A Head Full of Dreams

Coldplay - A Head Full of Dreams
Critic Score
Based on 31 reviews
2015 Ratings: #971 / 1021
User Score
2015 Rank: #671
Liked by 65 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

80
Spill Magazine
This British quartet’s latest release is distinctly upbeat and full of wonderful energy. Coldplay has found love again and is declaring it to the world.
80
Rolling Stone

A Head Full of Dreams ... might be Coldplay's brightest album ever – an eagle's-wings whoosh of soaring melodies, happy dance beats and Martin at his most wide-eyed.

80
NME
If ‘A Head Full of Dreams’ really is to be Coldplay’s last hurrah, then they’ve gone out with a flashbang of colour and catharsis.
70
XS Noize
Overall the album ends up being what they set out to create, a foot shuffling slow-dance floor filler and the concepts are great, they just fail to make anything their own.
70
Billboard

On the band's seventh album, A Head Full of Dreams, Chris Martin and ­company nervously creep onto the ­dancefloor, like boys at a junior high school prom, ­determined to unleash the boogie, white man's overbite be damned.

70
AllMusic

Under the stewardship of Chris Martin, Coldplay cheerfully embrace the cheese, ratcheting up both the sparkle and the sentiment so the album feels genuine in its embrace of eternal middle-aged clichés.

67
Pretty Much Amazing

The album doesn’t always work, but more often than not it sounds enough like vintage Coldplay to satisfy both diehards and casual listeners.

60
SPIN

If there’s a wavelength on which Head is particularly powerful, though, it’s not easily apparent — it plays more like an unenthused rediscovery of past prizes than an album with its own specific code to be unlocked.

60
Exclaim!

A Head Full of Dreams might have been a poptimist masterpiece. Instead, it's just another Coldplay album, with all the baggage — both positive and negative — that entails.

60
The Guardian

Martin’s inability to write in anything other than cliches and generalisations feels like a small mercy rather than a black mark.

60
The Sydney Morning Herald

If A Head Full of Dreams doesn't match the quartet's one unimpeachable triumph, 2008's Viva la Vida…, it nonetheless turns around Coldplay's downwards trajectory in the years since. Less wild with abandon than happily loose, they sound like a rock band stylistically at ease with the times.

60
NOW Magazine

Everyone loves a great smile, but A Head Full Of Dreams doesn’t have any teeth.

60
The Independent
Too much emotional laundry but it’s a step in the right direction.
60
The Telegraph
Throughout, the band’s big, bittersweet sound is, as ever, wonderfully immersive: whalesong cycles of electric guitar echoing through a buoyant soup of synths that sound both pleasant and forgettable.
60
The Observer
A poignant touch, but hardly the stuff of dreams.
55
The 405

The majority of the track list is made up of songs that run far too long, have beyond cringe worthy concepts and lyrics or simply sound too unoriginal to stand out from the others.

50
Consequence of Sound

Martin puts on the confetti-spewing Technicolor dreamcoat he discarded for 2014’s downer Ghost Stories and returns on the band’s 7th studio release with a rejuvenated spirit.

50
musicOMH
There’s nothing particularly new or original about it, but its uplifting, soaring nature will melt all but the most cynical of hearts.
50
The Needle Drop

Coldplay returns with a vibrant, danceable followup to last year's Ghost Stories.

48
Pitchfork

For all the record's eclecticism, Coldplay remain a band that put the "us" in "obvious," blowing up the simplest sentiments for maximum appeal.

40
Clash

It’s clear that the group are in a kind of creative stasis, eager to attempt new ideas but afraid to ultimately break with the past.

40
The Arts Desk
Perhaps saddest, there is nothing here that isn't canonical Coldplay. There's nothing that isn't Coldplay only a little diminished, entirely the opposite of the joyful optimism of the happy, ravey geometry of the artwork.
40
The Irish Times
Equal parts lifeless and lofty, heart-wrenching and emotionally guilt-free – the shaky countdown to a Coldplay Christmas starts here.
40
Spectrum Culture

Neither noble experiment nor fitting farewell, A Head Full Of Dreams is a disappointing dud from a band that deserves a better send-off.

40
Mojo
A big record, but one that leaves little mark.
40
DIY
For a record about breaking ground and finding a new, happier place, where's the catharsis?If, as hinted, this is Coldplay's last bow, it's an awfully limp way to go, and actually a disservice for a band who deserve credit where it's due - just not this time.
40
PopMatters

So despite leading with a song called “Adventure of a Lifetime”, Dreams gives us none of that: no real risk, no real adventure, and surprisingly little fun or catharsis.

30
Drowned in Sound

A Head Full of Dreams ... sounds like a well-studied, rigid, demographic-conscious impression of Coldplay, empty as a consequence.

20
Under the Radar

A Head Full of Dreams is insufferably bland at best and downright offensive at worst.

MySoftBulletin
10

Coldplay make music for people who microwave soup

Bimapolis
55

This project is one of my least favourite Coldplay records since it's overwhelmed with clichés, but I still have a weird amount of nostalgia attached to it. I remember listening to this album for the first time shortly after its release as I was on vacation, and I was walking a beach with crappy headphones making it difficult to hear. I entered a quiet area for "Everglow" and that track blew my mind, serving as a balladry melodic bridge between this project's two explosive ... read more

SnowyFighter
38

My head is full of nightmares after listening to this lol

Ouccchhhhhhhhhhh this one hurts. This album tries so hard to be colorful, that it ends up not being colorful and yeah that's the main problem with this album. It's sometimes cheesy, and most of the time it's boring. Some of the instrumentals and switch ups are actually terrible, like on Army Of One. And other times, there is literally nothing interesting with the instrumental at all. Like at least their other albums were full of life. ... read more

Shades002
52

1. A Head Full of Dreams - 6/10
2. Birds - 5/10
3. Hymn for the Weekend - 8.5/10 ⭐
4. Everglow - 5/10
5. Adventure of a Lifetime - 5.5/10
6. Fun - 6/10
7. Kaleidoscope - N/A
8. Army of One - 4/10
9. Amazing Day - 4/10
10. Color Spectrum - N/A
11. Up&Up - 3/10

47/90

5.2/10 (Meh 5.0-5.9)

ThEggMcWaffle
58

The Coldplay Defender Saga: Episode 7

We've finally arrived at the first Coldplay album I'm more mixed on. The highlights here are still the usual Coldplay quality, but a lot of tracks were just plain boring. It's still produced immaculately and I still like hearing Chris's voice, but I'm hoping they take more risks on the other records I've yet to spin

Favorite Track: Hymn for the Weekend

Least Favorite Track: Everglow

banandafirst
70

why do they sound like that on Kaleidoscope

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Track List

1A Head Full of Dreams
3:43
75
2Birds
3:49
73
3Hymn for the Weekend
4:18
79
4Everglow
4:42
69
5Adventure of a Lifetime
4:23
83
6Fun
4:27
feat. Tove Lo
64
7Kaleidoscope
1:51
53
8Army of One
6:16
Contains hidden track "X Marks the Spot"
55
9Amazing Day
4:31
63
10Colour Spectrum
1:00
48
11Up&Up
6:45
74
Total Length: 45 minutes

Year End Lists

#9/People
#24/Variance
#29/Entertainment Weekly
#35/NME
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Added on: November 6, 2015