Coldplay Vision of Their Final Album Will Be a Full-Circle Throwback to 1999

Coldplay frontman Chris Martin knew what the band’s final album would look like when they were putting out their first three-song EP in 1999. Decades later, the British pop-rock band has oscillated from being one of the most loved groups of all time to one of the most divisive. Their dreamy, wistful catalog has garnered the same kind of critiques as rock band Nickelback. The nostalgia of their early days becomes a sort of cringey downfall.

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Critics and fans welcomed Coldplay’s first three albums with open arms: Parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head, and X&Y. But sometime around the late 2000s and early aughts, the band fell out of favor compared to their earlier years. Nevertheless, they kept writing, recording, and touring.

After all, Martin has been heading toward his end goal all this time: one final Coldplay record with the same visual and audio qualities as their debut EP.

Coldplay Shares Vision Of Their Final Album

In the Rolling Stone cover story for December 2024, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin sat down with Alex Morris to discuss his band’s soaring highs and devastating lows, from their heyday at the top of the charts with hits like “Clocks” and “Yellow” to becoming a sort of meme-ified version of themselves, á la Nickelback or Creed. Martin’s creative persistence helped keep the band going through these lowly valleys. And as it turns out, Martin has been visualizing the end of his band since they released their first EP in 1999.

Martin told Rolling Stone the final Coldplay album will be an eponymous “homecoming” of sorts, returning to the same sonic offerings that propelled them to stardom at the turn of the 21st century. Even the album’s visuals will be a touching callback. “The cover of the album, I’ve known it since 1999,” the frontman said. “It’s a photograph by the same photographer that took the photo that’s the cover of our first EP.” The Safety EP cover is a stark portrait of Martin, his face blurred from too-long exposure.

In a Coldplay.com series titled “Art History,” photographer John Hilton described the process of selecting the soon-to-be stadium rock band’s first EP cover. “There were loads of pictures, all in black and white,” he said. “There were blurred ones and sharp ones, but that one just looked nicely weird. I suppose at the time, I was justifying it as trying to capture him moving around the stage and being all crazy. It also fitted in with that dark, Radiohead-y thing that everyone was into at the time.”

How Chris Martin Creates Amid The Criticisms

A once-popular band falling out of fashion is nothing new in the music industry. As the old adage goes, the higher you climb, the harder you fall, and one could certainly relate that testament to Coldplay’s career. The band has multiple prestigious awards under their belts. They play stadiums. Their music is recognizable all around the world. That’s no small feat for a group of guys who started jamming in their college dorm bathroom in the 1990s.

Nevertheless, Coldplay has become one of many bands who are now mocked for the very thing that made them popular in the first place. Critics claim that their music is too saccharine, milquetoast, or mild. The New York Times once called them “the most insufferable band of the decade.” In his 2024 Rolling Stone cover story, frontman Chris Martin described how he navigated this massive and ubiquitous fall from grace.

For one, he stays positive about the haters: “It would be terrible if we lived in a society where everyone had to [like the same thing],” Martin said. “We’re a very, very easy, safe target. We’re not going to bite back.”

“It’s a daily thing not to hate yourself,” he continued. “Forget about the outside critics. It’s the inside ones, too. That’s really our mission right now. We are consciously trying to fly the flag for love being an approach to all things. There aren’t that many [groups] that get to champion that philosophy to that many people. So, we do it.”

Photo by Mick Hutson/Redferns