A Head Full of Dreams
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LP / Format
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CRITIC REVIEWS
80
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Martin’s inability to write in anything other than cliches and generalisations feels like a small mercy rather than a black mark.
60
Too much emotional laundry but it’s a step in the right direction.
60
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.
55
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
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
There’s nothing particularly new or original about it, but its uplifting, soaring nature will melt all but the most cynical of hearts.
50
Coldplay returns with a vibrant, danceable followup to last year's Ghost Stories.
48
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
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
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
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
A Head Full of Dreams ... sounds like a well-studied, rigid, demographic-conscious impression of Coldplay, empty as a consequence.
20
A Head Full of Dreams is insufferably bland at best and downright offensive at worst.
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
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
Coldplay manages to find a way to continue to ruin their legacy despite putting out admittedly popular yet mediocre music in the 2000's. Give it up bro just retire lmfao
You know, through the first half of the album, I was thinking this is probably the best album since Viva La Vida. And then, they decide that for nearly 20 minutes, they are gonna go for total effortless music. It's very unfortunate. Because a pretty damn good album was turned into a decent, and wildly inconsistent one. I think this has plenty of great Coldplay songs here, but while other albums would often go to a level of pretty decent music, this drops into forgetfulness for pretty much half ... read more
Mylo Xyloto: Part II
After an underrated record like "Ghost Stories", Chris Martin and his fellas decide to make another "Mylo Xyloto" styled album, so what does that mean? It means that ultra poppier Coldplay are BACK baybay, so the record will 100% be hit or miss, and in fact it actually is hit or miss.
Honestly I don't hate it, I think that at the end it is a decent album after all, more likely saved by the first half of it that has the stronger tracks and the two big ... read more
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Track List
| 1 | A Head Full of Dreams 3:43 | 74 |
| 2 | Birds 3:49 | 73 |
| 3 | Hymn for the Weekend 4:18 | 78 |
| 4 | Everglow 4:42 | 68 |
| 5 | Adventure of a Lifetime 4:23 | 82 |
| 6 | Fun 4:27 feat. Tove Lo | 64 |
| 7 | Kaleidoscope 1:51 | 55 |
| 8 | Army of One 6:16 | 56 |
| 9 | Amazing Day 4:31 | 62 |
| 10 | Colour Spectrum 1:00 | 49 |
| 11 | Up&Up 6:45 | 75 |
Total Length: 45 minutes
Year End Lists
| #9 | / | People |
| #24 | / | Variance |
| #29 | / | Entertainment Weekly |
| #35 | / | NME |
Added on: November 6, 2015