coldplay

[1] U2, ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’

I was given my first CD player for my birthday that year and had to choose one CD. A friend suggested I replace my favourite album. The Joshua Tree had been out for three months, ample time for me to decide – briefly – that it was the greatest record ever released, so that was the one. How fickle our young selves are.

I forgot about it for a few years, when chest-beating stadium behemoths were painted as the devil incarnate, but have come back to it a bit now, and it’s not too harsh a shock to see this song at the top of the pile. U2’s plodding and patchy recent efforts, and the “will this do?” likes of Coldplay’s vapid X&Y are giving impassioned, crowd-pleasing rock a bad name again, though, and the superior quality of The Joshua Tree is shown in stark relief.

Not everyone’s cup of tea, of course, and not really my favourite stuff these days. Some songs break through. I like the yearning and insistent chords, and the way it builds, shown to more obvious effect on Rattle & Hum’s gospelified version. The Chimes’ fantastic soul cover a few years later takes it even further, bringing out the potential Bono hoped it had.

Of course, it could just be a load of cod-religious, bombastic, empty posturing. Hey, that’s why we love them, right? Junior tried to get with the questing theme by working out how to sit up unaided. Didn’t quite manage it, but she put on a decent performance. Acting baby.

Coldplay, ‘Talk’/Julie Andrews and children, ‘Do-Re-Mi’

So here we have an actual new single, Coldplay’s tilt at the Christmas No.12. More serious commentators than me have seriously pointed out that it’s a limp song hanging from Kraftwerk’s ‘Computer Love’ riff, and there’s a great big anvil of truth in that. In homage, Junior spends its five minutes 10 seconds trying to roll over and ends up looking like Ralf Hutter hunched over his handlebars, negotiating a Tour de France Alpine hairpin bend with cold German precision (there is no other form of precision, really). There’s barely a nod to Chris Martin’s influence, unless you count the puzzling fact that I had “Mojo” written in biro on the back of my hand.

Now, ‘Do-Re-Mi’ has always made her smile, perhaps incredulous at my note-perfect rendition. We tried the crackly old LP today, part of a job lot I nabbed off my mum when she and my dad embraced the CD age. Lorraine Kelly of television fame tells us that The Sound of Music is enjoying a mini revival, and I’m not one to snub a bandwagon.

Junior looked impressed that Julie Andrews didn’t get the “ti” and “so” lines mixed up like some people, but found the children annoying. Especially that Friedrich.

To recap then, a number twelve hit for ‘Talk’ and a timely festive repackage for The Sound of Music.