Coldplay has been fusing together stadium rock with intricate descriptions of emotion for more than a quarter century, and their 10th album opens with a grand overture that sets the listener up for an uplifting experience. But Moon Music’s title track upends expectations quickly, dissolving into a simple piano melody that refracts and folds in on itself until lead vocalist Chris Martin breaks the spell. “Once upon a time I tried to get myself together/Be more like the sky and welcome every kind of weather,” Martin muses in a singsong cadence, picking apart his insecurities and foibles until he finally asks, “Is anyone out there? I just need a friend,” as the instruments backing him melt into a puddle. The show of vulnerability is a startling opening, but being so open felt right for the multi-hyphenate Martin. “With ‘MOON MUSiC,’” Martin tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, “I felt like, ‘Well, what if I just really told how I feel every day?’” At this point in their career, closer to the end of their run than not (more on that in a moment), Coldplay has broken up the cycle by touring continuously while making and releasing new music rather than subjecting themselves to predictable album-tour cycles. The band considers Moon Music to be of a piece with 2021’s Music of the Spheres rather than another era. “I quite like this way of working where you don’t have to attach albums to tours and they don’t have to be these things that start and stop,” says bassist Guy Berryman. “It’s quite nice having the fluidity of what we are doing.” Moon Music, like the satellite it’s named after, dips in and out of different phases while still holding fast to Coldplay’s hooky, thoughtful core—appropriate for an album that’s largely about remaining true to oneself. “JUPiTER” is a tale of self-acceptance that opens with Martin in folkie mode, with more voices and instruments coming in as the titular character begins to feel comfortable in her own skin: “I love who I love,” Martin and a choir sing in call-and-response mode on the chorus, and the music grows more ecstatic as Jupiter’s story grows more jubilant. The gorgeously assembled “🌈,” meanwhile, incorporates the late Maya Angelou singing the spiritual “God Put a Rainbow in the Clouds.” “You have to accept all your colors and all the colors of other people—literally and metaphorically,” says Martin. “Once you accept all those colors, then you can be yourself, and then you can let everyone else be themselves.” Coldplay’s and Martin’s flirtations with the dance floor over the years have resulted in some of their biggest hits, and Moon Music finds salvation in different eras of clubbing. “AETERNA” brings the band back to the rave, its stretched-out guitars and galloping rhythms framing Martin’s exhortations to “feel it flow.” The duet with Nigerian upstart Ayra Starr “GOOD FEELiNGS” drops by the disco, while “feelslikeimfallinginlove” hearkens back to Coldplay’s grandest pop triumphs, its fist-pumping chorus getting energy from the romantic sentiments Martin’s singing about. Much has been made of Martin’s insisting that Coldplay is going to call it quits after album 12. (“Having that limit means that the quality control is so high right now that for a song to make it is almost impossible, which is great,” he explains.) But Martin wants Coldplay’s listeners to experience Moon Music as a representation of where he and his bandmates are in this dizzying moment. “It’s our manifesto, or my way of looking at things right now,” says Martin. “In terms of how to continue, how to not give up, how to accept reality, not run away from it, not hate anybody—even in the midst of always being filled with so many difficult emotions. And it’s with Max Martin: He made sure that it’s really good.”
