Coldplay Thinks That Rock Music Has Nowhere Else to Go

Oh, dear. It’s another “rock is dead” bleat, this time from Coldplay, a band that done their best to kill it.

In the past, I would have gone to great lengths to refute such hyperbole, but this time, I’ll willing to concede that rock isn’t feeling very well at the moment. There’s nothing of consequence on the upper half of the album charts and there’s very little rock troubling the charts that track streaming.

However you want to dissect it, rock certainly isn’t the primary driver of musical culture anymore, a position it held for decades. Over to you, Chris Martin in The Telegraph.

As Coldplay release their new album,  Chris Martin and the band tell Neil McCormick why rock has had its day

‘We felt like rock music has been done,” says Chris Martin, apparently dropping the lid on 60 years of swaggering guitar bands. Contemplating the zesty pop tones of Coldplay’s new album, A Head Full of Dreams, Martin suggests “the future of music is in new sounds and new ways of treating vocals. We wanted to add those colours to our palette.” His bandmate Guy Berryman agrees: “There’s an awful lot of rock music already out there. I’m not sure there is anything left to add.” Not that Martin thinks Coldplay will be considered any great loss to the genre by die-hard rockers. “No one would ever put us in a list of the top 10 rock bands. We’ve maybe rocked out once, for 10 minutes. I don’t think anyone would throw up the devil horns to any of our major works.”

His bandmate Guy Berryman agrees: “There’s an awful lot of rock music already out there. I’m not sure there is anything left to add.” Not that Martin thinks Coldplay will be considered any great loss to the genre by die-hard rockers. “No one would ever put us in a list of the top 10 rock bands. We’ve maybe rocked out once, for 10 minutes. I don’t think anyone would throw up the devil horns to any of our major works.”

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