Oh yes

Coldplay vs U2

Behemoth vs Leviathan: both have singles out in anticipation of full albums later in the year. Its fair to say that Coldplays offering has caused more surprises



Coplday fans are used to hearing 1-2 minute bursts of this sort of stuff before the real song starts, or as interludes between the main tracks (several examples on Mylo Xyloto), not extended to 5 minutes of health spa backing music released as a single. It could have done with the lyrics on screen too, as they helpfully did with Atlas, which was great. No doubt it will grow on me, and fair play to them for taking a risk - Leviathan does frolic after all.

(update: we have official lyrics now.)

U2 have stuck a bit closer to form, and if Coldplay are giving up on the stadium singalong songs (to be fair, it was mostly going 'oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh' but at least the lyrics were easy to pick up) then Bono is ready to step up. He's even borrowed Chris Martins dangly lamp from Fix You and stuck a microphone on it:


this one is really growing on me, it's not a radical departure, but when you're as good as U2 you don't need one.

Remembrance Video Clips

2 good video clips for use this weekend, the first from ReelWorship, simple and powerful:



the second is U2's Peace on Earth, as used in the Lincoln U2charist last year

U2 as Worship Leaders?

In anticipation of the launch of the U2 Studies Journal (I kid you not), try this article, on how U2 'lead worship' at their live gigs. Whether you think they actually do or not, it's still a good piece on what's involved in leading worship in the first place....

...well, that is if you think 'worship' means 'concert style event with audience participation'. There is so much more to it than that. But that's another post.....

Through the gates?

U2 'The Playboy Mansion' from 'Pop' (written about 15 years ago, just after Michael Jacksons 'History' album came out)

If Coke is a mystery,
Michael Jackson History
If beauty is truth,
and surgery the fountain of youth
What am I to do?
Have I got the gift to get me through
The gates of that Mansion

If OJ is more than a drink,
a Big Mac bigger than you think
If perfume is an Obsession,
then talk shows confession
What have we got to lose?
I'll never push my way through
The gates of that mansion

Don't know if I can hold on
Don't know if I'm that strong
Don't know if I can wait that long
Til the colors come flashing and the lights go on
Then will there be no time for sorrow
Then will there be no time for shame
And though I can't say why I know I've got to believe
We'll go diving in that pool
It's who you know that gets you through
The gates in the Playboy Mansion

The Playboy Mansion
In the Playboy Mansion
Then will there be no time for sorrow?
Then will there be no time for shame?

no doubt much will be written, and much of it will be speculative. God alone knows the truth.

Bono on Swine Flu (nearly)

'Breathe' from No Line on the Horizon

Every day I die again, and again I'm reborn
Every day I have to find the courage
To walk out into the street
With arms out
Got a love you can't defeat
Neither down or out
There's nothing you have that I need
I can breathe
Breathe now

16th of June, Chinese stocks are going up
And I'm coming down with some new Asian virus
Ju Ju man, Ju Ju man
Doc says you're fine, or dying
Please
Nine 0 nine, St John Divine, on the line, my pulse is fine
But I'm running down the road like loose electricity
While the band in my head plays a striptease

The roar that lies on the other side of silence
The forest fire that is fear so deny it

Ok, 'Mexican' wouldn't have scanned, but if you read it and imagine it was composed this week....

New single, U2's worship anthem Magnificent is out on May 4th.

I believe in Father Christmas

Mark Meynell dissects Bono's version of 'I believe in Father Christmas', complete with video and source criticism of the lyrics. Bono turns it from a song of disappointment and disillusionment to a song of faith:

Spirit of Coldplay 2: Prospekts March.

Coldplays Viva La Vida was a subtle assault on U2's crown as the most spiritual stadium band of the turn of the millenium. Prospekts March, the Coldplay EP released last week, isn't quite such rich pickings, but there are one or two intriguing clues to the spirit of Coldplay.

The EP has 8 tracks, 3 are remixes of tracks on Viva La Vida (Lost+, Lovers in Japan and Life in Technicolour ii, which adds a layer of vocals over the original instrumental). There are 5 new tracks: Postcards from Far Away (short instrumental), Glass of Water, Rainy Day, Prospekts March/Poppyfields, and Now My Feet Won't Touch the Ground. There aren't any official lyrics with the CD, but this site is as good as any for finding them.

As a Coldplay fan, I wasn't disappointed - quite frankly I couldn't work out how Lovers in Japan had been remixed, but don't care because it's my favourite track of 2008. And Glass of Water is a cracker. There are cross-references a-plenty 'Now My Feet' picks up from the refrain of 'Death Will Never Conquer', a rootsy concert extra on Coldplay's latest tour, and there's some Pink Floyd in there for the discerning customer too. The whole CD checks in at nearly 30m, which is pretty good for an EP, and longer than some Smiths LP's used to be.

The most obvious religious references crop up in Lost +:

See Jesus, see Judas/ See Caesar, see Brutus/ see success is like suicide/Suicide, it's a suicide/If you succeed, prepare to be crucified (done by rapper Jay-Z)

where the rapper seems to be comparing the fate of Jesus to that of various rap artists and black leaders who were killed (Martin Luther, Malcolm X). I'm not convinced about putting rap artists on the same plinth as civil rights leaders, but the insight is fair enough - 'if you succeed, prepare to be crucified'. There is a world of difference, though, between the crucifixion of Jesus and any other martyrdom. Sure we take up our cross and follow him, but I wouldn't pretend that any of our suffering is equivalent to what Jesus did, or to argue that Notorious Big is somehow deserving of being on a roll-call of martys alongside the Son of God. Is that because I is white?

Rainy Day is a bit more subtle, and rather ambiguous:

Then there was rain

The sound foundations are crumbling

Through the ground comes a bit of a-tumbling

And time was just floating away

We can watch it and stay

And we can listen

Oh rainy day, come 'round

Sometimes i just want it to slow down

And we're separated now, i'm down

But i love when you come over to the house

I love it when you come 'round to my house

Which put me in mind of Alastair Darling and the world economy: it is raining right now, and foundations we though were sound are crumbling. Jesus was right - he always is - if we don't build our lives on his words then we are building on sand. I don't know whether Chris Martin here is calling for the rain 'come round to my house' or for company - a bit like the OT prophets who called for God to rend the heavens and come down. We want to see this stuff tested because we're convinced that it's fake, and it's time for something authentic and true. And we also want our own foundations tested, so that God's rain washes away what isn't from him, or the stuff we've convinced ourselves is from Jesus but actually isn't.

Finally, Glass of Water is a modern Ecclesiastes...

Scared of losin' all the time

He wrote it in a letter

He was a friend of mine

He heard you could see your future

Inside a glass of water

With ripples and the rhymes

He asked 'Will I see heaven in mine?'

Oh that is just the way it was,

and nothing could be better,

and nothing ever was.

And they say you can see your future,

inside a glass of water,

with riddles and the rhymes

but 'will I see heaven in mine?’

Son, don't ask,

Neither half full nor empty is your glass

Cling to the mast

Spend your whole life living in the past

Going nowhere fast

So he wrote it on a wall

The hollowest of halos

Is no halo at all

and Televisions selling plastic figurines of leaders

Saying nothing at all

And you chime

Stars in heaven align

Son, don't ask,

neither half full nor empty is your glass

Cling to the mast

Spend your whole life living in the past

Going nowhere fast

What are we drinking when we’re done … just glasses of water.

...it's probably the combination of fatalism, and the fact that there's nothing you can do about your future (just like chasing the wind). If you spend too long trying to work out the future, whether in a glass of water or in the stars, you'll miss the future God's got for you. And if you hang on to what you've got, you'll definitely get nowhere (shades of Jesus and 'those who hold onto their lives will lose them'?). And as Jesus said, glasses of water are for giving away (Mt 25).

Top 10 spiritual U2 songs

With the news that the new U2 album release is being delayed until 2009, if you have withdrawal symptoms then try 'the top 10 spiritual U2 songs' at the @U2 fansite. Interesting that there's no Vertigo ('your love is teaching me how to kneel') or Gloria. If you're really into all this, the site also has a list of Bible references in U2 lyrics.

Spirit of Coldplay

They are turning my head out
To see what I'm all about (Coldplay: Lovers in Japan)

Back in the 60's, a researcher went through loads of back copies of Time magazine, trying to gauge its position on religion and spirituality. Matthew Fox (not the one from Lost) found that most of the stories headlined 'religion' were about church politics and the church institution, but for issues of life, death, purpose, God etc. you had to go to the Arts section. There, poets, painters, dramatists and film-makers were all wrestling with spiritual questions, whilst the church debated whether or not to use Latin.

I don't agree with most of what Fox says, but I think this insight is spot on. It's hard to escape spirituality in mainstream culture, and Coldplays Viva La Vida is no exception.

The CD, alternative title 'Death and all His Friends', is loaded with spiritual and mystical thoughts, as well as themes of war, love, loneliness and joy. It helps that its great musically too, though I'm constantly reminded of other bands: U2 (Cemeteries of London), Marillion (a brief section of '42'), Depeche Mode (Yes), and the Beatles (the Violet Hill video, and the co-ordinated outfits, like Sgt Pepper on skid row).

The challenge is that the spirituality of Viva La Vida isn't like that of U2. Finding the spiritual subtexts and bible references in U2 is a hobby for large chunks of Christendom, (if you're interested try Mark Meynell and this U2 Sermons site). Coldplay reference the Bible much less often, though there are nods here and there, as well as to hymns and churches (e.g. A Message from X&Y), but whilst Bono has a clear Christian framework to use, argue with, reject and rework, it's less clear where Chris Martin and co are coming from.

The world of Viva La Vida is a deeply spiritual one. '42' - possible code, via Douglas Adams, for 'the meaning of life' - muses on death and what happens after:
Those who are dead are not dead
They’re just living my head
And since I fell for that spell
I am living there as well

Time is so short and I’m sure
There must be something more.

.. which is a bit double edged. Yes there's more, but if you think too much about the dead you end up living in your own head, rather than really living. We have to let them go, and not cling on in an unhealthy way.

Cemeteries of London tells of a journey around nighttime London, looking for God, and finding ghosts and witches:
God is in the houses and God is in my head…
and all the cemeteries in London…
I see God come in my garden, but I don’t know what he said,
For my heart it wasn’t open…
Which is a powerful statement about the presence and reality of God in our world, both the world of life and among the dead, but that we can miss him.

Though various bits of the CD were recorded in churches, the spirituality here doesn't owe much to religious institutions. The most prominent mention of the church is the dystopia of Violet Hill, where
Priests clutched onto bibles
Hollowed out to fit their rifles
And the cross was held aloft
I don't know where this is about the co-option of religion by the 'carnival of idiots' who shape this imagined future, or whether the church is seen as a natural partner of manipulative and corrupt leaders. However even if the church is corruptible, God isn't, as the deposed dictator of Viva La Vida knows 'St. Peter won't call my name'

Finally, two moments of God in weakness. The gravelly 'Yes' seems to be an expanded meditation on the sexual temptation of a lonely man, and what it feels like to struggle
Yeah we were dying of frustration saying "Lord lead me not into temptation"
But it's not easy when she turns you on
If you'll only, if you'll only say yes
Whether you will's anybody's guess
God, only God knows I'm trying my best
But I'm so tired of this loneliness

In a completely different vein, Reign of Love, which emerges soothingly from the fantastic Lovers in Japan, expresses a yearning which could have come straight out of Bono's lyric book:
I wish I’d spoken
To the reign of love
Reign of love By the church, we’re waiting
Reign of love My knees go praying
How I wish I’d spoken up
Or we’d be carried In the reign of love.

Many of the tracks on Viva La Vida are paired up, and it's great to play with the image that in the foreground we have the Lovers, and the gentle music beneath every Lover is the that of the Reign of Love - the kingdom of God, which is a love that personally invites us to speak with it, and be carried by it.

Viva La Vida is a profoundly hopeful work, and there's plenty to suggest that this hope is grounded in a faith - however vague and experimental - in a loving God who is behind it all, even a world of war, dictators, loneliness and unrequited love.

But I have no doubt
One day the sun will come out (Lovers in Japan)

Extras: other relevant links:
Objet trouve quotes a Chris Martin interview where he is very clear about his own faith in God : I definitely believe in God. How can you look at anything and not be overwhelmed by the miraclelousness of it? Meanwhile one reviewer subtitles their piece 'Coldplay gets religion' . Planet Wisdom has more thoughts on Violet Hill, and it's depiction of a compromised church. Other comments on the religious themes in Viva La Vida on Whatif Gaming, and a detailed track by track exposition at Protestant Pontifications, which is worth a look.