A Head Full of Dreams
There’s a blissful lack of restraint to the multi-layered neon pop of Coldplay’s seventh album. The carnival kicks off within 20 seconds of the opening track and allows only the most fleeting of (Barack Obama-narrated) sit-downs as the extent of their ambition is joyously unfurled. It’s the sound of a band liberated: free to recruit Beyoncé for vocal duties on the euphoric “Hymn for the Weekend,” trade sweet nothings with Tove Lo for “Fun”’s hazy holiday romance jam, and talk Noel Gallagher into a *(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?*-sized guitar solo on the hymnal “Up&Up.”
A Head Full of Dreams is Coldplay’s chance to reassert the eager-to-please exuberance that Ghost Stories deliberately downplayed and prove that Adele isn’t the only artist who can mobilize a monoculture in 2015.
Chris Martin drops the moody dramatics of his break-up album for a colourful new collection
Check out our album review of Artist's A Head Full of Dreams on Rolling Stone.com.
If you subscribe to the idea that Coldplay are heirs to U2's throne, then A Head Full of Dreams is their Pop. On that record, Bono and compa...
Coldplay's seventh album A Head Full of Dreams is insufferably bland at best and downright offensive at worst. Over the course of 11 tracks, Chris Martin and company repeatedly and frequently make decisions that prompt the simple question: why?
There’s absolutely no need for it to be this way. Coldplay were never exactly critical darlings, but equally the group weren’t hated –
Despite roping in the production team behind hits by Rihanna and Katy Perry, Chris Martin and co can’t seem to help lapsing into the same old windy cliches and nondescript balladry
After expressing a state of emotional paralysis following his “conscious uncoupling” from Gwyneth Paltrow on 2014’s meditative Ghost Stories, Coldplay’s seventh album finds frontman Chris Martin moving on.
The band the whole world wants to be is back - but what do THEY want to be? Review by Joe Muggs