Before Chris Martin utters his first words in Coldplay’s hit single “Clocks,” it feels like there’s something of monumental importance about to happen. In the song’s intro, we are greeted by Martin’s melancholy piano melody and an ethereal keyboard pad that, within a few seconds, swells to carry us into the full band’s dramatic entry. Their playing somehow feels both urgent and muted at the same time.
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With such a grandiose beginning, we are only left to wonder what message Martin has to impart. While the musical backdrop hints at something potentially cosmic, “Clocks” is actually a relationship song, albeit one that is as fraught as the restless musical composition would suggest it is.
Martin’s Relationship Story—And Its Twists and Turns
If the lyrics of “Clocks” feel hard to decipher, it may be because they were written to fit the mood of the music, and not the other way around. “Clocks” had its origins in Martin’s piano melody, and the band thought enough of it to compose a song around it and record a demo, though without any lyrics. Those were added once Coldplay’s manager, Phil Harvey, urged the band to include “Clocks” on A Rush of Blood to the Head, even though it was initially ticketed to be used for a future album.
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In the song’s initial verse, it’s not even clear that Martin is singing about a relationship, as it sounds as if he is dealing with some generalized despair instead.
The lights go out, and I can’t be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
Have brought me down upon my knees
Oh, I beg, I beg and plead, singing
Martin even concedes that he has trouble putting a name to what’s bothering him, referring to it later in the first verse as “trouble that can’t be named.” But as he rolls into the nearly-wordless chorus, the story takes a turn. Martin’s only utterance in the chorus is the phrase, “You are.” So it appears he can put a name to his trouble after all.
Then “Clocks” unveils another twist in the second verse. It begins with more description of Martin’s “trouble”: Confusion never stops / Closing walls and ticking clocks. The following lines, however, reveal some ambivalence on Martin’s part, as he sings, Gonna come back and take you home / I could not stop, that you now know. By the verse’s end, he is questioning himself, asking, Am I part of the cure / Or am I part of the disease?
But wait, there’s more! By the end of the song, Martin doesn’t appear to be ambivalent anymore. In the space of three-and-a-half minutes, he has gone from describing his relationship as a tide that has brought him to his knees and a tiger “waiting to be tamed” to “home, home, where I wanted to go.” Martin brings back his crooning of “You are” as a backing vocal to the “home, where I wanted to go” line, insinuating that his partner is nothing less than a home to him.
Is Martin saying he wants to be in a tumultuous relationship? Or has he had a change of heart about the “you” he is singing to? He leaves it to the listener to answer these questions, and given that the lyrics were written to serve the music, Martin himself may have never bothered to answer the questions.
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The Impact of “Clocks”
“Clocks” was Coldplay’s first Top 40 hit in the U.S., climbing to No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Songs chart and reached the Top 10 on their Adult Top 40 and Alternative Airplay charts. It won Record of the Year at the 2004 Grammy Awards, and was certified Double Platinum.
The original version of “Clocks” also had some success as a dance track, getting to No. 31 on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart. It was the first of seven songs by Coldplay to place in those rankings. Other artists, most notably Röyksopp and Gabriel and Dresden, issued their own dance remixes of “Clocks.”
“Clocks,” as the only Billboard Hot 100 single from A Rush of Blood to the Head, helped the album to a No. 5 ranking on the Billboard 200 and a Quadruple Platinum certification.
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